


cum gladio et sale

by AccursedSpatula



Series: astra inclinant, sed non obligant [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Animal Sacrifice, Ardyn Izunia Backstory, Character Death, Drinking, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Healer Ardyn Izunia, M/M, Mild Gore, Near Death Experiences, Occupation, Prophecy, Rituals, Stabbing, Surgery, Violence, military campaigns, warfare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-06-05 11:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 44,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15170204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccursedSpatula/pseuds/AccursedSpatula
Summary: “And the vulture?” Somnus asked, eyeing the one out over the hill, circling low.“Ex avibus alite,” the augur replied. “A good sign, coming from the east.”“Vultures eat the dead,” Ardyn commented, skeptical. Somnus gave him a stern look.“Well, today they will not be our dead,” the augur said, snorting. He turned, walking past Ardyn, starting back down the dusty hill towards their encampment.Every love story starts somewhere.





	1. Ardyn

**Author's Note:**

> Title meaning 'with sword and salt,' a Roman soldier's motto.
> 
> Beta read by the smart and stellar [sordes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sordes/pseuds/sordes). Any remaining mistakes are my own.

Ardyn never really trusted the will of the gods.

Blasphemy, he knew, but he’d spent many a year praying for omens never granted for him, ones that had consumed him mind body and soul yet still been denied him, despite the readings, despite his devotion, and Ardyn had learned to rely on his own guidance to steer his life rather than the good humors of the heavens.

But Somnus, by contrast, was a holy man, devout, the ideal Lucian citizen, loyal to both his republic and to the heavenly powers that presided over all mortal (and immortal) affairs. He insisted upon the augur and the readings before every skirmish and took their results very seriously, just as he did with the reports from their scouts and sentries. This campaign was a balance between faith and knowledge, but so far, it had proved extraordinarily successful.

Thus they were out at dawn, watching the birds on a hilltop, Somnus hanging on every word the augur had to say while Ardyn was left to his own thoughts of his lapsed faith.

The augur had found the morning particularly auspicious, with thunder and lightning on the horizon to the east. Ardyn and Somnus had flanked him on either side, watching the handful of ravens fly overhead (another good sign, he was told), Ardyn unable to shake the feeling of unease that settled in him at the sight of the the dark clouds rolling in. Rain would not bode well at a time like this; it would bog them down and slow any advances, and make resupply difficult on the roads leading in.

“The lightning is an excellent sign,” the augur told them, a little fat man, bald save a rime of white hair left around the crown of his head. “Signals Raumah’s approval. As are the ravens. _Ex caleo._ Yes, excellent.”

“And the vulture?” Somnus asked, eyeing the one out over the hill, circling low.

“ _Ex avibus alite_ ,” the augur replied. “A good sign, coming from the east.”

“Vultures eat the dead,” Ardyn commented, skeptical. Somnus gave him a stern look.

“Well, today they will not be our dead,” the augur said, snorting. He turned, walking past Ardyn, starting back down the dusty hill towards their encampment.

Ardyn cocked a brow, still unconvinced, staring out at the long, low valley before them, dotted only by a smattering of scrubs few scraggly, twisting trees. Everything seemed still and quiet, as if nature herself were taking a moment to honor those who would die here in the days to come. It was a stillness and silence that sent a chill through Ardyn, one that settled in his bones and left him feeling unsettled, despite the promising readings and words of the augur.

A steady breeze swept down the valley, coming from Ardyn’s back, rustling the scrubs and the sands they sprung from as it travelled from their camp to where the city lay, just beyond the other side of the pass. Morbidly he wondered if there were anyone on the other side of the valley, staring back over the same sands that he did, thinking similar thoughts and praying for good fortunes to stave off the invaders that had come to their shores.

“What do you make of it?” Somnus asked, his paludamentum billowing in the breeze behind him. He looked particularly regal, from the griffon emblazoned on his on his breastplate to the gold edging on the cloak on his shoulders. All of his armor caught the early dawn light, and standing there, looking down the valley in profile, hair close cropped and posture perfect, he was the picture of Lucian military rule.

Ardyn raked his wild auburn locks back, caught by the breeze and flung into his face; though nearly the same shade as Somnus’ own, they’d never favored the same styles. “He says they’re good signs,” Ardyn replied. “What else is there?”

Somnus gave him an imploring look.

“Do you fear he’s trying to appease you?” Ardyn questioned. “He’d have little to gain from that.”

Turning his gaze back out over the valley, Somnus shrugged, the top plates of his manica clinking as his arms moved. “I merely have lingering worries.”

“You always do. It’s what makes you a good general. No, in fact─one of the _best_.”

Somnus snorted in humble laughter. “Now you flatter me.”

“Never,” Ardyn teased. “I merely ask that you remember your brother the _medicus_ who stood at your side when they erect a statue of you outside the forum.”

Somnus laughed pointedly, a smile cut into his face, revealing sharp white teeth. For a moment they stood in silence, Ardyn staring at their shadows, imagining how they must look in reflection. Somnus, ever perfect, already looking like the statue that would someday certainly put up in the capitol to honor his deeds, Ardyn just as messy as his wild locks, in the blue robes of a field surgeon, no beautiful armor nor cloak to adorn his form.

“I suppose we ought to get back and see to the men,” Somnus said, turning his gaze to Ardyn, who was still fixated on a particular patch of scrubs in the distance. He hesitated a moment, perhaps expecting Ardyn to follow him immediately. But Ardyn lingered a moment, and Somnus merely refocused his gaze and started down the hill.

Sighing, Ardyn turned back towards the encampment after a long beat, trailing after in Somnus’ wake down the sandy hill.

\---

Ardyn knew the clang of iron against iron would haunt him for years.

It rang out across the plains, an eerie score to the siege and battle taking place here, accompanied by the occasional snap of the ballistae firing and the cries of dead and dying men. Ardyn hated all of those sounds, though his mare didn’t seem too startled by any of them, dutifully following the junior tribune Ardyn was with. They’d been separated from the other officers in the chaos, left to wander the muck and despair of the plains, avoiding skirmishes as the legions clashed around them.

The siege was by no means a disaster; Somnus had good reports to rely on and had heeded them, linking their legions to push into the city from both the north and west, with a naval assault in the harbor to the east. Three prongs meant more to coordinate, but it also meant that their enemy would be dealing with an assault from three sides, their defenses spread thinner to cover as much of the front as they could.

While not the capitol, it was the largest city they’d come across on this campaign, and the citizens had certainly aware of their presence, word having spread from the smaller outlying towns that had fallen in the last few weeks. The city had been fortified, and their barrage had lasted for three days before Somnus had elected to push forward across the plains, in an attempt to breach the city using massive siege towers.

They’d been separated in the last push, Ardyn stranded with one of the junior tribunes as a siege tower collapsed near them, set alight by a few lucky arrows, quickly turning into an inferno that reached skyward before cracking and coming apart. In the chaos they’d bolted, Ardyn clinging to his mare as burning pieces came own around him, and now Ardyn and the junior searched the milieu for their standard.

Smoke drifted across the plain in thick billows, white and grey curls weaving across the sullied fields, concealing great swathes of the fields, the only tangible landmarks the looming walls and siege towers in the distance. The air was still and heavy despite the action, thick with tension everywhere, and Ardyn looked up as a handful of crows flew across the open plain to land on a spire lining the walls, a chill seeping through him.

Swallowing thickly, he wiped a dirty hand over his face before kicking his mare off to follow the tribune up over a shallow embankment, the whole area now covered in the grey-white smoke. Ardyn’s mare struggled up the hill for a moment, and as she finally cleared it he was thrust back into the struggle once more, surrounded by shapes moving in the smoke. Panicked, Ardyn turned his mare in a circle, trying to discern anything among the bodies and mud and lone broken ballista, looking for a way out, and among the shadows in the haze he spotted the junior, his dapple in a panicked dance as men closed in.

Ardyn’s mare whinnied, clearly now on edge as well, her composure finally broken, and Ardyn eyed the walls in the distance, trying to orient himself. The whine of arrows cut through the air, the resulting little _thiwp thiwps_ peppering the cacophony around him as they found their targets, Ardyn’s mare stepping from side to side, confused, no longer willing to suffer under his guidance. She continued to dance as men rushed at them, wild, iron in hand, and Ardyn kicked her hard into a canter.

They made it a few dozen paces before an arrow struck her in the neck, and Ardyn turned her, trying to serpentine, but it was a doomed effort. He found himself faced with two spearmen, and the mare tried to stop, seeking her own self presevervation now as she reared, viciously kicking one in the head but throwing Ardyn as the other managed to spear her below her neck.

He and the mare fell together, Ardyn trying to pull his leg up to avoid breaking it as she lay down on him. It twisted, painful, but certainly not broken, though he was trapped beneath her heavy body. Struggling, desperate, Ardyn clawed at the dirt, cursing every power in existence as he slowly dragged himself out from under her, frantically taking stock of his surroundings. He could hear the cries of legionaries and other soldiers as they were cut down, the familiar, chilling snap of iron striking iron, the men around him moving in a chaotic, disorganized fashion.

To his right, Ardyn could see the junior tribune struggling, his dapple wheeling in a circle, swinging at the soldiers closing in at him, seemingly holding them off for the time being. Ardyn crawled a bit further, giving himself enough room to reach down to pull his leg out from under the mare, and then twisted back onto his stomach, going rigid with what he saw just off to his left.

Through the smoke, Ardyn could make out a looming, hooded figure closing in on the tribune, clad in bright, gleaming, polished armor that glinted sharply in the daylight, one taller than any man he had known, looking more like a deity or an apparition than just another soldier. Fluidly, he engaged with two of the legionaries, striking one down before driving his sword into the other like it were routine, an exercise and not a life or death struggle.

Three more followed in a quick string, this man, _this spectre_ moving through them like they were made of parchment, cutting them down with absurd ease. The junior was next, pulled down from his horse, and the dapple was rapidly dispatched as the tribune tried to right himself on the ground, managing to scrabble to his feet and draw his sword to face this terror.

Their spat wasn’t even worthy of being called a match. The junior had minimal training; after all, he was an elected official, designed to lead, not to be pulled down into the mud and taken on in such a fashion. Nonetheless, he bravely swung his sword to the best of his ability, and cruelly, this phantom toyed with him, knocking his blade back and forth, slowly circling him. Though the junior no doubt knew his end was at hand, he kept up until the end, when the giant knocked his sword from his hands and then ended him with two quick cuts of his own curved blade.

And then he looked to Ardyn, still getting his ankle free from the mare’s heavy body.

There was no face beneath that hood, no, not a human one, at least, but rather a mask, polished bronze, ornately worked with whorls and swirls embossed upon it, the eyes unfeeling, the mouth a hard-set line. The figure stopped, giving Ardyn a long beat to pull his ankle free, and then he struggled to his feet as this _thing_ approached him, sword drawn.

Ardyn drew his own sword, as ready as he could be, held out, vaguely aware of how ridiculous he must look, about to engage this terror. A plume of smoke drifted between them, making this enemy all the more ethereal, and Ardyn’s heart hammering in his ears drowned out any and all sounds of the battle around him. He was tense, rhythmically squeezing the handle of his sword, ready, waiting for that _strike,_ not willing to make the first move himself.

For a moment the masked man seemed to regard him curiously, from how his steps slowed, to how his head tilted just ever so slightly to the side. Ardyn continued taking tiny half-steps backwards, keeping some distance between them; if his opponent wanted him, he’d have to close that gap.

And close it he did, with a quick rush of several hard strikes, ones that Ardyn struggled to evade, managing to knock two to the side with his own sword. He was far better trained than the junior had been, but this man was _strong,_ impossibly so, and Ardyn had to muster all of his strength just to even knock away his attacks. Pressing his luck, Ardyn swung at this giant, his blade brushed easily aside again and again, and Ardyn wondered just how long he would be able to hold out.

This brute seemed to be content to toy with him, at least for a moment, brushing off Ardyn’s blows and occasionally striking back in turn, and Ardyn kept up his performance. Dimly he thought on the augur’s words, remembering a distinct _“They won’t be our dead”,_ distracted for a split second on the image of his own body among the other fallen on these plains.

His distraction cost him, and he swung too wide, leaving himself open. The brute was there a second later, curved blade slicing upwards, catching Ardyn’s arm and shoulder at the gap of his chestplate, before arcing back down to graze the top of his thigh, splitting the skin there. Ardyn buckled, pain flashing through him, white hot, crippling both his arm and his leg, and he struggled to keep his composure.

As he attempted to right himself, he heard a deep, thoroughly amused chuckle rumble from his opponent, echoing behind that mask and bouncing around his metal chestplate, the sound warped, eerie, further inhuman and unnatural. Ardyn hated it, hated that he was being _laughed_ at, and the resulting ire gave him the strength to stand up once more, sword back at the ready, brow drawn sternly in resolution.

Ardyn knew he didn’t have much longer in him, the onslaught from this hooded figure growing more brutal with each passing second. He could put down his sword, let this foe give him a quick (albeit cowardly) death, or he could keep fighting, keep pressing up to the end.

Stupidly, he opted for the latter.

Ardyn fought harder, advancing, and though deep down he knew it ultimately wouldn’t matter, it would at least let him die knowing he’d fought as hard as he could. His strikes were wild and fairly unpredictable, wide one moment, misplaced the next, occasionally hitting home, but it was enough to get this man to focus on something other than toying with Ardyn as he had done with the junior, that chuckle turning into grunts of concentration. If he wanted to put Ardyn down, Ardyn would certainly make him earn it.

But his strength waned quickly, once fiery blows now weak and neutered, though Ardyn kept them coming. His opponent had backed off, gone back to toying with him, seemingly ready to let a bloodied Ardyn exhaust himself before he put him out of his misery. Ardyn shouted at him, angry, angry that he was about to die on this foreign shore at the hands of a man who couldn’t even respect him as an opponent.

Ardyn had no fire and fury left in him, barely able to keep his sword pointed at his enemy, but he stayed on his feet, facing this preternatural _thing,_ the smoke swirling around the two of them. Time seemed to slow, every second stretched out as his opponent pulled back his sword, curls of smoke winding around his arms, the sun glinting brightly off that armor, that _mask._

And in those seconds, Ardyn saw his opening.

He surged forward, praying to every god named and unnamed, and hooked his sword in under the seam of his opponent’s chestplate, a spot exposed as he’d lifted his arms. Somehow he managed to strike above the seam of his mail, blade pushing through the leather padding there, driving into soft flesh with a sickening, wet sound.

Apparently it was flesh and blood after all.

Shocked and horrified and grateful, Ardyn watched the blood trickle down his blade back towards the handle. They both stood there for a long beat, Ardyn admiring the sight, still in disbelief that it had worked, a sentiment that he felt his opponent might share in this moment, and then his opponent bashed him across the face, pushing Ardyn away, his sword following. Stunned, Ardyn barely managed to escape the blade, clipped on his upper arm as he turned, the slash sending a bright, fresh wave of pain through him.

Though injured, his opponent was far from _beaten,_ and now Ardyn had no weapon. He wheeled, looking for the body of the junior, knowing the dead man wouldn’t need his sword anymore, but something caught his eye instead through the smoke.

_The standard._

Both of them turned to look at it, coming out of the haze, a brilliant, red and black banner topped with the scintillating bronze griffon. It was a sight Ardyn would label as nearly _divine,_ for some cosmic thread of fate had finally been wound in his favor, dragging his brother and his cohort here to this spot at this very moment. Relief flooded him as his brother’s men stormed through the haze, and then Somnus’ mount was charging through the smoke, its beautiful horns twisted up towards the sky. Somnus looked like some hero from classical legend seated upon it, paludamentum flowing in the wind, his helmet and armor glowing, giving him an almost supernatural aura.

His foe looked to him one last time until he was swarmed, and Ardyn backed away, watching the legionaries surround this giant. He still fought well, his inclination for violence clearly well imbued, cutting down several until they managed to knock his sword away and cripple him. Surrounded, Ardyn’s opponent made one last mad dash to pull the sword from his own side, no doubt to fall upon it again rather than face their blades, but he was quickly stopped.

Somnus dismounted without ceremony beside Ardyn, giving him a quick look to assess Ardyn’s state. Ardyn nodded, a quick confirmation that he’d survive, and Somnus gave him a quick nod in reply before drawing his sword and starting toward the group that encircled Ardyn’s kneeling opponent. He walked with the utmost confidence, striding across the muddy, bloodied dirt as if it were the atrium to his estate, and Ardyn had always been envious of the way Somnus could carry himself and command such attention.

Stumbling, Ardyn limped up to the circle, watching his brother cut between two legionaries, stopping just a few feet shy of this kneeling giant, sizing up their wounded foe. His confidence spilled over into arrogance now, from how he threw his head back slightly, and Ardyn sighed, wishing his brother would just end the man and be done with it rather than dally about with this show.

Somnus finally stepped forward, tearing back the hood and then reaching for the mask this stranger wore, and he pulled it away, hooking his fingers under the chin as the stranger struggled, held back by two startled legionaries. It came free in Somnus’ hand despite the protest, and Somnus held it up, admiring the detail for a moment before casually discarding it behind him, the bronze mask landing face up in the muck near Ardyn.

For the first time, Ardyn had a face for this enemy, a _real_ one, and he was shocked to find that the sight humbled him in an odd fashion. The stranger had dark skin colored a warm brown, a heavy brow now pursed in pain, and his brown eyes were dazed, looking from face to face in the crowd. His mouth was set into a firm line, a bit of blood beaded at the corner, though if it were a result of the wound Ardyn had given him or just a result of a blow to the face Ardyn couldn’t say.

But he was human, and that was what unsettled Ardyn, what tightened his stomach with unease. It was simpler to pretend he was this faceless, masked _thing,_ not a person, an inhabitant of this city, this land that they were so carelessly trampling through. He’d been defending his stead, as Ardyn and Somnus no doubt would have done to their capitol should strangers have arrived.

But Somnus just snorted in amusement, lifting the stranger’s head by pressing the tip of his blade under the man’s jaw to get a good look at him. The stranger snarled at him, as much as he could, no doubt still wracked by pain from the knife still in his gut, and then his gaze settled on Ardyn, his amber eyes still full of anger, fearless, ready to die, his nostrils flaring with each jagged breath.

Somnus stepped around him, blade drawn, tugging at the neck seam of the stranger’s chest plate to create enough of an opening. He pressed the tip of his blade there, ready to strike, and Ardyn expected the stranger to close his eyes, maybe to pray, to do something, but he just kept staring, as if he wanted Ardyn to remember this forever.

“Stop,” Ardyn said, somewhat quietly, his tongue feeling like lead in his mouth. He pulled his gaze away to look to Somnus, who was waiting expectantly, a bemused smirk still on him.

“Want to do it yourself?” he said, pulling the blade back, flipping it in his hand to hold the handle out to Ardyn. “You’ve earned it.”

“No,” Ardyn said, shaking his head, summoning all of his composure to stride over to Somnus without letting the pain get the better of him. “Don’t kill him.”

“‘Don’t kill him,’” Somnus parroted. “Have you turned into a bleeding heart on me? You were out of my sight for barely an hour and now you’re pleading for the life of a barbarian.”

“No, no.” Ardyn pushed the handle of Somnus’ blade down. “All I mean is, he’s valuable, look at him. The craftsmanship in his armor? The blade? The way he fights?”

“He’s a soldier; that’s what they do.”

“He’s royalty, or at least someone important.” Ardyn searched Somnus’ face for any sign of acknowledgement as his brother looked away. “Take him as a hostage. He’s someone’s son, or husband, or─”

“─or brother.”

“Exactly.” Ardyn smiled, though from the copper taste in his mouth, he was fairly certain his teeth were blood stained and the gesture had the opposite effect of what he intended.

“You think he’ll even survive?” Somnus nudged the handle of Ardyn’s blade with his leg, and the stranger hissed in pain, dropping his head forward, thick black locks cascading over his shoulders. Ardyn gave Somnus a flat look, in response to both his brother’s actions and his statement.

Somnus waved his hand, flipping his sword around and sliding it back into his scabbard. “Right, right. You’ll see to him.” He turned, gesturing to the legate and a few of his men. “Take him back with my brother. And make sure he’s well guarded.”

The legate immediately dismounted, issuing orders to those around him, and Ardyn watched as their prisoner was hauled to his feet, that sword still sticking from him like a knife in a roast, shifting slightly as he was marched away.

“Are you well enough to ride back?” Somnus asked, his gaze briefly falling to the wound on Ardyn’s leg, the barest hint of a frown tugging down the corners of his mouth.

“I’ll find it in me to manage,” Ardyn replied, flatly, a smile on his lips. “It beats walking, at any rate.” Somnus chuckled, clapping Ardyn on his good shoulder, the plates of his manica clinking, accompanying the firm _pat_ of his hand smacking Ardyn’s upper arm.

“Be safe, then,” Somnus said, signaling for his mount, and one of the legionaries hauled the beast over. Somnus mounted without further preamble, swinging his leg over the beast’s great back, reins in hand, and Ardyn gave him a whimsical, nearly mocking salute as his brother wrangled the mount. The legate cast his look of disapproval, but all Somnus did was laugh and shake his head.

Somnus turned the stallion, kicking off into a canter as he disappeared into the smoke, his cohort with him, Ardyn watching the curls part in their wake, until even the gleaming standard was lost to the haze.

\---

Somnus called upon him that evening.

Ardyn knew it would be about their prisoner; the man wouldn’t have much left in him by now, and Somnus would want him dealt with before he expired. In all honesty, he’d been ready to meet the man all afternoon, mulling over their encounter as he returned to camp. It had stuck with him even as Ardyn had set to healing his own injuries, sealing the cut in his shoulder and thigh, leaving only fine white scars in their wake.

He’d stripped and cleaned the dirt and grime and blood of the battlefield from him, dined with one of the remaining junior tribunes, and then, as he was making his way back to his tent in the golden-pink milieu of twilight, his brother had found him.

“Let me get my kit,” Ardyn had said, and Somnus had gravely nodded.

He’d fetched his kit, walking across the camp in the wake of his brother. Somnus’ translator, a woman they’d picked up at the start of the campaign, stood outside one of the infirmary tents, clearly waiting for them, and she followed Somnus inside, pushing in front of Ardyn. Inside it was quiet, the air thick with the sharp smell of copper and the rancid, sour smell of rot, the lighting low, a few drops of the golden light from outside trickling in through the window slats cut high in the canvas of the tent. Two oil lamps burned near the single occupied bed, the other half-dozen vacant, and although it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness, Ardyn could clearly see the shapes of their prisoner on the bed, and another of the _medicus_ tending to him.

Boldly, Somnus approached them, his translator following, but Ardyn was slower to move. The firelight of the oil lamps was quick to dance over the thick manacles on the stranger’s wrists, ones that ran under the bed, chaining him to it, the curves of the metal shackles and links glimmering orange-white and catching Ardyn’s eye.

Their prisoner was pale, the color drained from his face, though still awake and alert, eyes following both Ardyn and Somnus as they moved across the tent. Somnus threw one look at the other medicus and the man scrambled off, gathering his tools in a rush before scuttling from the room in a flurry of blue robes. The translator moved past Ardyn, taking up a good spot midway up the bed, Ardyn and Somnus remaining at the foot.

Somnus just looked at their prisoner for a long moment, propped up on a messy stack of bedding, his side covered with thick plasters and linen bandages, all dyed an unsettling shade of crimson. Sweat had beaded on his skin, his long, messy black hair cascading over his shoulders, loose from the cord that tied it back, his strong brow pursed together, no doubt from the pain and the struggle of it all, and Ardyn could see that he didn’t have a great deal of time left without serious intervention (though he was holding on remarkably well, something Ardyn had to admire him for). Without the armor, he certainly looked smaller, though not much; the man was still a giant, and Ardyn guessed he was easily a half head taller than Somnus or Ardyn himself.

“You speak common?” his brother asked, and the stranger lowered his gaze for a long moment. As the silence hung in the air, Somnus looked to the translator, gesturing, and she turned to face their prisoner.

“I speak it well enough that she need not choose my words for me,” the stranger replied sharply, his voice a low, deep rumble, like thunder of a sudden storm rolling across a field. Somnus raised his brows in surprise, but Ardyn kept his face a perfect mask, hiding his surprise and inward admiration for how this stranger not only spoke their tongue but clearly had _command_ over it. The translator, however, gave the stranger a cross look, and then turned her gaze to Somnus and Ardyn, as if expecting them to defend her.

“All right, then,” was all Somnus said. He gestured to the translator and then to the door, and she was clearly not pleased, but she stood and went, sandals skiffing across the floor.

“Do you have a name, then?” Somnus continued, moving to sit on the empty bed beside their prisoner.

“As surely as you do,” the stranger returned.

Somnus chuckled, raising his brows once more, this time in bemusement. He looked to Ardyn, a sense of disbelief in his eyes, and Ardyn merely tilted his head, cocking one brow. This was Somnus’ territory, not his own.

“‘ _As surely as you do,_ ’” Somnus parroted, brushing something from his sleeve. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Well, you would be correct. My name is Somnus Izunia Caelum.”

The prisoner kept silent, just boring holes into Somnus with his stare, his umber eyes still aglow with a long simmering rage, and Ardyn knew just a little more stoking of the bellows would easily reignite the flames. Somnus drew in a sharp breath, straightening up slightly.

“This is my brother Ardyn,” he supplied, gesturing in Ardyn’s direction, and Ardyn felt that glaze settle back on him, so hot with fury but oddly capable of making his own blood run cold. “You no doubt remember him.”

The stranger struggled to draw in a deep breath, and Ardyn caught him trying to conceal a wince. “And what do you want with me, Somnus Izunia Caelum?” His voice was weaker now, more hoarse, each word a strain to get out.

“Let’s start with a name,” Somnus replied, and Ardyn could hear the grave edge to his voice. “The men you were with said you’re called Gilgamesh. Am I correct to assume that _surely_ must be your name?”

The stranger was silent for a long beat, staring down at his own side, at the blood-wet bandages plastered to his skin. “Yes,” he finally forced out, and there was a new vulnerability to his voice, something soft and unexpected.

“Good barbarian name, wouldn’t you say?” Somnus said, turning his head towards Ardyn.

“I suppose it has a ring to it.” Ardyn shrugged slightly, still more focused on their prisoner─on _Gilgamesh_ ─than any offhanded comments his brother might make.

Perhaps sensing Ardyn’s stare on him, Gilgamesh laboriously hauled his gaze up to meet Ardyn’s, and Ardyn could see that rage slipping away, yielding to something... apathetic and empty. Gilgamesh no doubt still expected to die, and owed them nothing, lying in this bed here, waiting out his final moments, and it seemed that that reality was truly beginning to dawn on him. No longer would he be cut down on the field of battle in a blaze of glory, no, now he was dying ignobly in a bed surrounded by the foreigners who had bested him and razed his homeland.

“Now, Gilgamesh, my brother here made a very wise call to spare you because he believed you were of importance. You owe him your life, really.”

Gilgamesh chuckled darkly, a little bit of light coming back into his eyes. “A shame there’s not so much of it left.”

“Oh, this is all very mendable,” Somnus said, blase. “Provided my brother’s supposition turns out to be true, we’ll have you up and about it in no time.”

Another deeper, darker laugh from Gilgamesh. “I’m no fool searching for a glimmer of hope as I lie dying.”

“I’m quite serious.” Somnus folded his hands together. “My brother is not a military man, yet he is at my side on every campaign because he is the finest _medicus_ not only in our land but in _every_ land. No one can even approach his skill.”

Gilgamesh turned his head to look at Ardyn once more, and Ardyn found it in him to stare back just as hard, though he still felt small and outclassed by the two other men in the room.

“Then I regret to tell you that your brother’s supposition was not true, and although he may be a fine medicus, he is a poor judge of a man’s stature,” Gilgamesh replied, and Ardyn could see the hint of a jaded grin on his lips. “I’m no one of importance. The son of a wealthy merchant who foolishly joined the ranks.”

Somnus nodded his head in mock evaluation of Gilgamesh’s story. “I suppose, I suppose,” he mused. “But, you see, the other men you were with... well, four of them called you a prince as we strung them up. One man, I’d say he’s a liar for certain. Two, a liar and a partner. Three... perhaps it’s the truth. Four? Undoubtedly.”

Gilgamesh didn’t turn his head, but he did glower at Somnus from the corner of his eye.

“Pain does remarkable things to loosen the tongues of men,” Somnus murmured. “A merchant’s son, he’s worth a small ransom, maybe enough to warrant keeping him. But a prince?”

Gilgamesh’s silence betrayed him in lieu of his words this time around.

“Seems Ardyn was right, then,” Somnus said, and there was a cold smile on his face as he raised his head to look to Ardyn. “You should’ve put money on it.”

“I’ll stick to dice,” Ardyn cut in.

Gilgamesh glanced down at his side again, his stare meandering from his bloody bandages to the manacles holding him to the bed.

“Now that that’s,” Somnus paused to wave his hand in front of his face, “out in the open, I suppose we can get right down to the heart of things.”

He hesitated a beat, lips parted, his expression a little distant, perhaps waiting for an answer from Gilgamesh, perhaps formulating his own words, but after a moment he came to, blinking, and then cleared his throat. “As you’re no doubt aware, we’re still engaged in the siege, and while I expect my men will have complete control of the city within a few days, it will come at the unfortunately high cost of a great deal of lives on both sides. But I would be very willing and open to negotiate with your monarchs, or whoever is in charge and speaks for your people, that we may end this conflict a bit sooner.”

“And I’m your leverage,” Gilgamesh supplied.

“Just part of it, don’t get ahead of yourself,” Somnus chided. “But I would beseech you to urge your people to reason. Do so, get them to put down arms and end this... _slog_ and I will show mercy in droves to you and all the other inhabitants of this forsaken place.”

“And should they not?”

Somnus frowned, staring down at his own hands. “Then I shall mete punishment as needed.”

The silence hung in the air between the three of them, heavy with the weight of that threat. Somnus drew in a sharp breath, standing, his manica clinking almost jovially. “I leave you in my brother’s capable hands.”

Somnus grinned warmly at Ardyn, clapping him on the shoulder as he stepped past on his way to the door. Ardyn gave him a half-smile in return, quickly refocusing on the chains and shackles holding Gilgamesh to the bed. Ardyn wasn’t afraid to be left alone with the man, not in this state; even with the hole in his side repaired, he’d still be too weak to do anything, though Ardyn knew to watch himself regardless.

He took a second to steel himself before stepping to Gilgamesh’s side, where the blade had gone through, setting his kit down on the side table and flipping open the leather case. The linen that had been pressed there was saturated in blood, tacky, an unpleasant sight already, and Ardyn knew what lay beneath them would be worse. Gilgamesh snorted at Ardyn’s hesitation; when Ardyn looked to his face, he found his expression bemused and dark.

“What did your brother call you?” he asked, gripping the frame of the bed as Ardyn started to pull away the bandages. “The ‘ _finest medicus_ ’ in the land? Tell me, can you raise the dead?”

“I haven’t tried, but I’d give it a go,” Ardyn replied flatly. “Not right now, however.”

Gilgamesh laughed again, turning into a sputter, his grip on the wooden bed turning white-knuckle. “I suppose you’ll get a chance soon enough.”

Ardyn hummed, rolling back another chunk of the blood-soaked bandages, exposing more of the wound, and Gilgamesh grimaced, though from the sight or the pain Ardyn wasn’t sure. The gouge was certainly ugly; Ardyn’s blade had gone through at an angle, hooking upwards and towards Gilgamesh’s spine, though miraculously missing the wide artery that Ardyn knew lay somewhere in his stomach. Because of the angle, the wound had widened past the width of the blade, the blade pushed back and forth, creating an open slice the length of a grown man’s palm on Gilgamesh’s broad chest. On a smaller frame, it would have likely killed in minutes, that blade finding said artery or rupturing a more vital organ, but on Gilgamesh, with his rather imposing stature, it had found a space between those marks.

It was bleeding sluggishly, wide, red rivulets oozing from the divot, freshly renewed every time Gilgamesh strained or moved. Beneath the tear, Ardyn could see muscle, neatly cut and parted, and beyond that, intestines, pushed around. He frowned slightly, wondering what other internal damage he couldn’t see, what other organs may have been caught in the blade’s path, or if anything was beginning to fail due to the blood loss.

Smoothly, Ardyn wadded up the last of the bandages, pulling them away and depositing the mess beside Gilgamesh’s leg on the bed. Gilgamesh’s eyes were on him, his stare inquisitive and guarded, and Ardyn saw his stomach tense as he laid his own palm on Gilgamesh’s stomach just below the end of the wound.

“Try not to move,” he cautioned.

Carefully, Ardyn slipped his fingers into the gaping wound, past the layers of fat and muscle, down into the mess of intestines that lay below. Gilgamesh grunted sharply, his eyes shut, jaw set, and Ardyn heard the wood of the bed creaking from how fiercely he gripped it. Undeterred by Gilgamesh’s clear pain (he deserved some of it, in Ardyn’s opinion), he continued feeling, pushing his fingers between the loops of intestine, pulling them out as he needed to, finding them smooth and slippery. Gilgamesh’s blood quickly coated his palms and fingers, unpleasantly warm and slippery, Ardyn frowning at the sensation.

The wound was too low for the blade to have hit the stomach or spleen, Ardyn reasoned, so as long as the intestines were in decent shape he should live. He kept prodding, fingers moving over loop after loop, his free hand pushing down forcefully on Gilgamesh’s stomach to keep him still as he growled and groaned. He stilled after a moment, feeling a deep cut in one section, a slice that had nearly cut it clean in two.

Ardyn frowned, fingers lightly curled around this loop as he looked down at the mess of pink coils. He could stitch it, he knew, close everything up and pray for the best, but he also knew it wouldn’t work. Gilgamesh would last a day, maybe two, before the sepsis took him; he’d lost too much blood to fight any kind of infection and was already showing signs of it, from the sweat on his skin (a fever, Ardyn realized now, not from the pain) to his labored breathing.

But it wasn’t an option; Ardyn wasn’t even tempted by the prospect of it. He looked to Gilgamesh, eyes still closed, tendons in his neck straining, watching him for a long moment.

And then he focused.

He’d done this hundreds, no, _thousands_ of times before, and it was second nature to call up the magic he had been gifted with, pull it from somewhere deep inside him and let it well up, to overflow and trickle from his fingertips. To the world, magic was a danger found only in legends and omens, long stripped of this world, gone the way of Solheim; to Ardyn, it was his gift, his secret, his burden. Only Somnus knew of it, now that both of their parents had been laid to rest, and now, Ardyn supposed, so would this barbarian.

Slowly, carefully, Ardyn called upon it to seal this wound, reuniting flesh that had been rended asunder, repairing arteries and veins, stitching muscle, reconnecting nerves. Gilgamesh strained, breathing through gritted teeth, still in pain and now forced to deal with the new, foreign sensations of his flesh rejoining.

Ardyn sealed that jagged edge, felt out the other knicks and cuts his blade had left behind, mending them, rendering everything inside whole once more. It was slow, tedious work, especially with an injury so grievous, requiring concentration to keep himself in tune with his abilities, to prevent him from missing something critical, or to stop him from drawing too deep and over exerting himself. Gilgamesh went silent after a few moments, his eyes open but unfocused, scanning around the room before settling on Ardyn.

Staring at the ceiling, Gilgamesh let out a soft, weak chuckle, almost a haughty one, and he pushed himself up onto his elbow, seeming not to care that Aryn’s hand was still in the very much open wound in his stomach, staring at Ardyn, his brown eyes like two glowing coals in a bed of ash. His hair was sweat soaked, falling into his face, making him look all the more deranged.

“So you’re a witch,” he said, almost a bit snidely, and his tone told Ardyn everything he needed to know about how Gilgamesh felt about that label.

“I’ve no idea what─”

“You did something,” Gilgamesh retorted. “You fixed me. I felt it.”

“That’s what I do; I’m a medicus.”

“I’ve been cut up and stitched up before. No doctor is capable of anything like that.” Gilgamesh narrowed his eyes. “And your wounds from earlier are gone. You walk about as if I never touched you, and I saw you bleed─”

“You nearly hacked my arm and leg off is what you did,” Ardyn snapped, pushing the last loop back in, Gilgamesh grunting in discomfort. Sighing, he finally eased his hand from the wound, gently arranging Gilgamesh’s intestines back in in some semblance of order.

“I’m not a witch,” Ardyn corrected, matter-of-factly. “I’ve merely been... blessed with a gift.”

Gilgamesh snorted, shutting his eyes, grunting in pain once more. “ _Finest medicus._ ”

“And I wouldn’t be a witch,” Ardyn continued, ignoring the slight, flicking his gaze at Gilgamesh’s tense, strained expression, “I would be a warlock. Witches are women.”

“Forgive me,” Gilgamesh said, and for a moment Ardyn believed he was sincere. “With no beard upon your face, you’re easy to mistake for a woman.”

“You think a woman would be so ugly?”

“Perhaps all your women look as you do.” He shrugged cockily. “How am I to know?”

Without thinking, Ardyn laughed, caught entirely off guard by the joke. He quickly reeled himself in, however, reminding himself that this man was an _enemy,_ was _dangerous,_ had tried and nearly succeeded to end his life just that very afternoon, and even _if_ his tongue were evidently as sharp as that sword he had wielded, Ardyn should by no means acknowledge it.

Though it was certainly harder to hate this man than it had been to hate the spectre hunting him down on the field. Like this, out of his armor, injured, chained down and held captive, it was easy to see Gilgamesh for just a man, and to separate the man from the phantom, even though Ardyn inwardly knew they were one and the same.

He turned to his kit to distract himself, pulling out a hooked needle and spool of cotton thread. Bloodied fingers made threading the needle more difficult, and Ardyn struggled for a moment before he finally managed to get the thread through the eye.

“I’ve heard stories of witches,” Gilgamesh said as Ardyn returned his attentions to him, and there was a certain gravity to his voice, one that prevented Ardyn from instantly correcting him again. “Sacrificing children, eating their hearts. Praying to twisted gods for power.”

“Can’t say I’ve sacrificed a child as of late,” Ardyn replied. “But there should be plenty of eligible orphans in the city now.” He moved his hand over the lower portion of the wound, squeezing both sides, holding it together as he lined up the needle. In one quick, practiced motion, he hooked it through both sides of the wound, drawing the thread smoothly through before lining his needle up for a second stitch. Gilgamesh tensed up, gripping the side of the bed once more, breathing roughly through his nose as Ardyn continued to stitch.

Eventually, his sounds faded to silence, and Ardyn fully concentrated on his remaining work. He stitched the wound from bottom to top, with tight, even stitches that would last the ten days until they needed to be cut out. He hadn’t healed Gilgamesh completely; to do such a thing would be a sloppy way to have the men asking questions that Ardyn didn’t want. Rather, he’d pulled him back from the brink, fixed the worst of the damage inside and closed everything off, but left him still weak and wounded, recovering from a _nearly_ fatal stab wound.

Gilgamesh had no words as Ardyn tied off the thread, snipping it before wiping some of the blood off the wound. He had other wounds, Ardyn knew, but nothing that would threaten him as this had, and he was in a fine enough state to leave now, healthy enough for their purposes.

“I did what I had to to save you. If you breathe a word of this to anyone,” Ardyn cautioned, “I will have that witty tongue of yours torn from your mouth and your hands cut from your wrists. Am I clear?”

“I won’t speak of this,” Gilgamesh replied, and his tone was low and heavy, oddly grave.

Ardyn nodded, not expecting such an easy victory with how ornery Gilgamesh had been up until now. “I’ll send the other medicus to check on you.”

He took a step back, somehow foolishly expecting a _Thank you_ after all that, but of course earning only more sullen silence. Gilgamesh didn’t even look at him, just turned slightly, staring at the far wall of the tent and the pinkish-purple streaks of twilight visible through the windows.

Ardyn left him to his thoughts, whatever they were.

\---

The palace was beyond splendid.

Ardyn marvelled at the courtyard sprawling out before him, standing in the hallway just outside the throne room. A wide staircase led down to the gardens, easily an acre in size, full of winding paths and a variety of trees and shrubs. Ardyn had wandered them extensively, meandering between the shade of the palms and every sort of fruit tree known to man while he waited for their summit with the king to begin.

Everything about this place was lavish, from the floors with their ornate patterns, to the ceilings, gracefully arched and carefully painted. Most of the interior was covered with frescoes, visions men driving chariots, engaged in battle with fantastical beasts, or simply standing in attendance before the throne. At the head of it all was the golden splendor of the throne room, so ostensible and resplendent Ardyn had stopped in his tracks upon seeing it.

He’d been in awe of it for most of the summit, taking in all of the gold statues, the pillars, the reliefs cut into the walls, the ornate, massive throne on the high dais. It was hard to fathom how one man could possess so much, wealthy beyond even the richest patricians Ardyn knew (and he himself stood among them). This made his own holdings look like that of a pauper’s in comparison.

Though, Ardyn supposed, he certainly could get used to it.

Gilgamesh had stood beside Somnus for the first hour, pale and drawn yet very much alive and aware, until he moved to sit unceremoniously at the edge of the dais. Somnus watched him carefully, not disapproving, but rather trying to read the situation, giving Gilgamesh a moment of his attentions before he refocused on their king. The sight of him sitting in a heap, tired and straining, pulled a strange twinge of sympathy from Ardyn’s heart, one that he quickly tried to brush off by poring back over the massive reliefs on the walls.

They’d finished after a few hours, Ardyn walking out after Somnus and his retinue, his legs in dire need of a stretch. Somnus was confident as ever, striding about the place as if he owned it, which, for all intents and purposes, Ardyn supposed he did now. His paludamentum had swirled behind him like plumage on a bird, bright and colorful in the strong sunlight of midday. The retinue had been instantly dismissed, Somnus taking up company with Ardyn instead, meandering slowly with him down one of the open hallways that framed the main courtyard.

“I don’t know if I agree with that assessment, in regards to the levying,” Somnus continued, and Ardyn nodded as if he’d been paying attention and cared even in the slightest. “What did you make of it?”

Ardyn blinked once, trying to recall whatever his brother had been spinning on about; his memories of the last few hours consisted mostly of noting all the spots in the reliefs that should be touched up, buried under a general sense of _awe_.

“I’m not sure,” he said, projecting with enough confidence that Somnus would hopefully believe he’d been listening.

“I think we’re owed gold and other riches for our time here, for what we’ve faced, and we shouldn’t be forced to curb ourselves out of some proposed fear of retaliation,” Somnus replied, a certain insistence in his voice, and he stopped in his tracks, turning to stand next to the ornate railing that separated them from the short drop into the gardens. “The men deserve their spoils.”

Ardyn inhaled deeply, rolling his shoulders as he moved to stand beside Somnus, looking down at the gardens below. The silence encircled them for a few moments, no conversation, just the low sounds of other discussions in the hall and birds chirping happily, unawares of the schemes of the men around them. Ardyn quickly picked out Gilgamesh’s form in the garden, sitting on a bench beside a young woman while a boy played nearby. The woman was too finely dressed to be a slave─his wife, his betrothed perhaps? A sister? The boy his son, a younger brother?

“Rather beautiful, isn’t it?” Somnus asked from beside him, focused now on the ceiling above them, before snapping his gaze back out to the gardens. “I feel outclassed just standing here.”

“You, the staunchest supporter of the republic, impressed by a barbarian monarch?”

“Well, he certainly knows how to live, I’ll grant him that,” Somnus teased. “But yes, yes, long live the republic and all.” He leaned onto his elbows, rolling his neck to ease some of the stiffness from it.

Ardyn kept watching Gilgamesh, lips slightly pursed. Somnus took note, glancing up at him before following his stare down to find Ardyn’s target.

“Watching our little friend?” he commented, and Ardyn opened his mouth to protest. “Did you know he’s third in line for the throne? Two older brothers, though apparently one’s a bit of a lush and not really favored.”

Ardyn raised a brow. “Are you getting at something?” he said, smirking.

“Calling you a lush would cheapen the word,” Somnus retorted. After a moment, he continued on. “I can’t fathom that, picking leaders from a bloodline. How fickle.”

“Are you putting him to the sword?”

“Who?”

“The king,” Ardyn said, cutting himself off before Gilgamesh’s name could slip out.

“Oh.” Somnus scrunched his face. “I thought about it. Might be a good show of force, take him back and have him executed during the triumph. But I worry that might cause a ruckus here, so on his throne he’ll stay, at least for the time being. The sons, however... I think a couple of them might be fit for the arena?”

“For the games? The ludi?”

Somnus nodded. “Bring a few exotic beasts back, let them fight a couple of the princes.” He gestured out to Gilgamesh with his head. “He’d certainly put on a good show.”

“I suppose.” Ardyn looped a piece of his hair back behind his ear, trying to ignore how his pulse had quickened at the thought of letting Gilgamesh be torn to pieces in the arena. “But allow me to propose something. Since you’re worried about resentment, take the princes as hostages. House them with a few well known patrician families who owe us favors and will treat them well enough. For your arena and your triumph, take their generals, their commanders.”

Somnus straightened up, his mouth set in a firm line as he considered it. He braced his hands on the railing once more, shoulders slightly hunched.

“The loss of a general is felt less than the loss of a prince,” Ardyn finished. Somnus nodded, reluctantly at first, then more firmly as he settled into the idea.

“Reasonable as always,” he commented, trying to maintain his air of stiffness, though Ardyn could see the smirk on his face. “I’ll speak to the legate.”

After a moment he turned to look at Ardyn, shaking his head in a lighthearted manner. “You’re always spoiling my fun, you know?”

“It’s what I’m best at.”

Somnus laughed, bemused, and straightened up once more, surveying the gardens with a renewed air of authority, taking a deep breath as he switched characters from Somnus, brother to Ardyn, to General Izunia, commander of four legions.

“I should take my leave,” he said, adjusting the lining to his gauntlets. “But by all means, take your time here. May as well get a feel for the place; we’re going to be staying here until we depart.”

“Here, as in the palace?” Ardyn blinked, tucking his chin in towards his chest and raising his brows.

Somnus nodded. “Have our stalwart companion give you a tour.” He jerked his head in the direction of Gilgamesh in the gardens, before taking an abrupt step back, cocky grin back on his lips.

Ardyn rolled his eyes and sighed through his nose, folding his arms over his chest as he glanced back out at Gilgamesh in the gardens. It was strange, really, to see him like this, so blase and casual, and he wondered which version were close to the _real_ Gilgamesh, the bloodthirsty, marauding barbarian, or the jovial, easy-going fellow out there?

But people were rarely so simple, and Ardyn knew the answer lay in the middle somewhere. From Gilgamesh’s point of view, they were invading conquerors, ones that had just subjected his people and occupied his lands; of course he would fight hard to defend his homestead.

As Ardyn turned away, he silently wished that Gilgamesh just wouldn’t kill him in his sleep.

\---

For Ardyn, evidently, the solution he’d cooked up to not being killed in his sleep was just to _not_ sleep.

They’d been in the palace for three days, now rolling into the third night, and Ardyn had maybe accrued a collective four hours of sleep across that period. His body was tired, certainly, but his mind was plagued by far too many half-formed ideas and wants and fears to let him sleep, thoughts of home and the remainder of their campaign and the lingering, nagging dread of the possibility that he may never see his own shores again, that he may die somewhere here.

Instead he spent his nights tossing and turning, wandering about the lavish bedroom he'd been put up in, occasionally venturing outside. His second night he'd been rather bold, meandering around the gardens, through the mazelike halls past the throne room, to the second courtyard, finally taking a stairwell up and walking a long stretch along the walls, staring out at the flickering lights of the city and the delta, and the dark, churning waters beyond them.

Only the officers had been housed at the palace, and the legions were currently sheltered in the city’s barracks, with the native standing army now mostly disbanded, reduced to a handful of guard patrols.

Ardyn spent his days in a flurry of tending to the remaining wounded from the siege, wandering rows of injured men, setting bones, suturing lacerations, removing bits of metal and other foreign bodies, cauterizing and bandaging and suturing and generally running the whole gamut. By sundown each day he was bone tired, sullenly dining alone in his guest room, more interested in the wine than any food shoved in front of his face. The locals here drank beer, and most of the men had opted to follow suit, eager to get their hands on whatever alcohol was available to forget their struggles, but Ardyn held out for the wine, taking it from the officer's stores as he saw fit.

A few glasses a night wasn't enough to push him off the shores of wakefulness into the calm waters of slumber, and Ardyn again lay in his bed, staring at the fine wood ornamentation of his ceiling, counting the dots of spires that had been perfectly arranged in a grid. Restless, he raked a hand over his face, ignoring the sting of exhaustion on his eyes, and then untangled himself from the mess of pillows and linen, bouncing off his too-plush mattress.

It took minimal stumbling and fumbling to find an oil lamp, Ardyn lighting it with a snap of his fingers, the tiny orange glow doing its best to illuminate the vast bedroom. Nonetheless, it gave him enough light to find the decanter he'd left out and refill his cup, up to the brim, Ardyn taking a hefty pull for the road before topping the cup back off.

Chain of the oil lamp in one hand, cup in the other, he padded towards the door, spotting his sandals lingering near the foot of the bed. Ardyn frowned, considering walking back to them and toeing them on, but the night was warm enough, and it seemed like too much effort with his wine already in hand.

Ardyn slipped out the doors and into the hallway, greeted by the normal nightly serenade sung by a chorus of insects. The night was warm, far more pleasant than the unbearable heat of the day, a light breeze winding down the hallway, the marble cool under his feet, and Ardyn stood in the hallway for a moment, looking down in both directions while he decided which way to meander.

The breeze seemed to push him to his right, towards the south end of the palace, and Ardyn wasn’t one to fight it. He turned, slowly sauntering down the hall towards the juncture with the next, the sounds of revelry from one of the dining rooms drifting in as he approached, no doubt the officers and his brother up still up for a bit of indulgence.

Ardyn moved away from the source of the sound, walking down another hallway out towards the second courtyard of the palace. It was smaller, not groomed like the main one was, lush with trees and plants, but rather just a space, a lawn lined with a long pool on one side. As Ardyn rounded the corner, he could see the braziers in the courtyard were still lit, one at either end of the pond, illuminating most of the yard, and a figure was out on the lawn.

He stopped under the veranda, near the edge, taking another long sip of his wine as he watched the figure out on the lawn. It was undoubtedly Gilgamesh; his stature gave him away, even from a distance. He moved fluidly, like he’d done on the battlefield when Ardyn had first seen him, sword in hand, curved blade slicing through the air with perfect control, fighting off foes that were invisible to Ardyn, ones lost to the shadows.

Eventually he crept forward for a better look, standing near one of the braziers, his own lamp tossing golden peals of light onto the water, floating on the surface like petals of a brilliant white-orange flower. He glanced down at his own reflection, trapped on this shimmering canvas, the strong features of his face made sharper by the deep shadows of the low light, all framed by his usual mess of red hair, tired underneath it all, his fatigue even evident in his slack grip on the cup. Pulling his gaze off his own sad visage, Ardyn looked back across the lawn to Gilgamesh, still engrossed in his onslaught.

He watched him for a few long minutes, begrudgingly captivated by the way Gilgamesh moved, even though Ardyn knew he should leave, should slink off through the shadows and not engage any further with this man. But he stood, almost hypnotized, until Gilgamesh swung his curved blade one final time, and then pulled it in, driving the point into the soft soil of the lawn and turned to face Ardyn.

Neither of them said anything, just staring, Gilgamesh folding his arms over his chest, and for the first time Ardyn saw the thick streak of blood staining his tunic, resting where the wound and sutures were. Of course he ought not to be engaged in strenuous activity, Ardyn knew; his wound undoubtedly hadn’t closed, and it was doubtful that the sutures would have held under such movement.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Ardyn stammered, looking away, suddenly feeling very small under Gilgamesh’s hard stare, “doing... all that.” He gestured with his cup.

“Did you come out here just to tell me so?” Gilgamesh asked, and although his tone was biting it wasn’t quite as harsh as Ardyn had anticipated. “Or did you get lost while looking for more amphora to drain?”

“Doubting my intentions, are you?” Ardyn shot back, before he could help himself. Gilgamesh laughed, softly, rumbling around his chest like the sound of waves breaking on a rocky shore. He tugged the sword free of the ground, walking across the lawn towards Ardyn, stopping at a wide stone bench. He drove the sword back into the soil beside it, sharing a long look of acknowledgment with Ardyn before turning his back to him to sit on it.

Ardyn detached himself from his spot, gliding over the marble to the edge of the lawn, stepping onto the soft, cool grass. He shuffled over the lawn along the pool to the bench, where Gilgamesh had seated himself on one end, sword beside him, clearly leaving room for Ardyn.

After a moment’s hesitation, Ardyn found it in himself to sit beside the man who had tried to kill him a few days earlier, whom he had nearly killed himself, now offering to share a bench with him like an old friend. His oil lamp was set carefully between them, where they wouldn’t knock it over and set half the lawn on fire, but Ardyn kept his cup in hand. The silence settled over them again, oddly comfortable now, and Gilgamesh inhaled sharply before sighing, one so deep it seemed as though his soul were leaving along with his breath.

“Where did you learn common?” Ardyn asked, looking for something to break the silence.

“From a tutor, as a child,” Gilgamesh replied. “My father believed we were to be well read and well educated.”

“You speak it very well,” Ardyn replied lamely, unsure of what else to say. Gilgamesh glanced at him, a look of _I know_ written on his face. “I’m sorry. I meant it only as a compliment.”

Gilgamesh snorted and shook his head, laughing it off, but there was a genuine smile on his face, although Ardyn would attribute its source to the fact that Gilgamesh probably enjoyed humiliating him. He busied himself with another sip from his cup, the wine dry and a little sour on his tongue.

“Why are you here?”

Gilgamesh’s question caught him off guard, and Ardyn mulled it over, using the wine to buy him a few seconds to respond. “I can’t sleep,” he answered honestly, figuring there was no saving face with Gilgamesh, not anymore. “Haven’t been able to for a while now.”

When Gilgamesh looked at him next, there was a bit of sympathy in his eyes, but mostly Ardyn could see from Gilgamesh’s expression that that was _not_ the answer he’d been looking for, and that Ardyn had read the question wrong.

“Do you mean _you_ as in Somnus and the army?”

GIlgamesh nodded.

“Oh.” Ardyn looked down into his cup, wishing that he’d just been able to fall asleep in his bed and never started out on this venture. “There’s a plague in our lands. A terrible thing, with these black scales and─”

“─black eyes and humors,” Gilgamesh supplied. “I know of it. We have it too, here and there.”

Ardyn nodded. “We call it the Scourge,” he continued. “Anyway, there are... I don’t know what you want to call them... Rumors? Legends? _Statements_ written in books, books from Solheim, before the fall, that tell of something called the Heart of Eos. They say the Heart can... end the Scourge.”

“And so Somnus seeks it, in whatever land it may lie.”

“He does, though sometimes...” Ardyn swallowed thickly. “Sometimes I think he loses sight.”

“So why are you with him and his army?”

“Hm?”

“You are no military man, he said so himself.”

“I’m here to cure the Scourge, the same as he is,” Ardyn replied, a bit defensive.

“But you don’t see eye to eye with him.”

“My brother is a good man,” Ardyn snapped. “And my opinions are my own.”

Gilgamesh blinked in surprise, his head dropping slightly, and Ardyn could feel the bravado and confidence melt off of him. Ardyn wondered now how used he was to being cowed, if he had grown accustomed to his new reality of living under their thumb. Such a stark change it must have been, to once be so proud and now be treated almost as a servant in his own home, and Ardyn briefly thought on himself and Somnus in such a scenario.

“Why are you out here swinging a sword in the middle of the night?” Ardyn asked, changing the subject. “Planning to finish what you started as I sleep under your roof?”

“It wouldn’t do well to be seen training in the day, with all your officers about,” Gilgamesh answered. “They’d think I was planning to take up arms against them.”

“Are you?”

“I have a hole so deep in my side I whistle like a flute when I turn into the wind,” Gilgamesh replied, so deadpan, and Ardyn grinned at that comment, a genuine smile splitting his face. “No, no arms any time soon.”

In another life, Ardyn supposed, they would have been friends. But fate had thrown an ocean between them, straddling one on either side of this conflict and inadvertently setting them against one another.

“You should let me see it,” Ardyn said. “Maybe I can do something about the whistling.”

Gilgamesh raised a brow, in what Ardyn would have to label as disbelief or possibly irritation, but he straightened up, arms reaching behind himself to pull his tunic up and over his head. He wadded it into one hand, looking away as Ardyn shifted on the bench, scooting to turn and better see Gilgamesh’s side.

The wound had indeed reopened, blood smeared all over his side from the bottom of his ribs to the top of his hipbone, but Ardyn, a little hazy from the wine, found himself briefly distracted by Gilgamesh’s form instead of assessing his wound. Here in the low light of the braziers, all of the dips and planes of his broad chest were accentuated, outlined with brilliant orange highlights and shaded with inky black shadows. Ardyn liked men; it was another secret, though one more poorly kept, and Gilgamesh was certainly easy on the eyes, with a handsome face and a body built through years of training.

After a second he chastised himself inwardly for ogling this man who was essentially nothing more than a patient to him, gritting his teeth as he dropped his gaze and focused on the wound. The bottom portion had come unsealed, the sutures ripped, and Ardyn, a bit tipsy on the wine and frustrated with everything at hand, had little patience left to deal with it.

“Hold still,” he said, clipped, and put one hand on Gilgamesh’s stomach to steady him, his other starting to pick the stitches free. Gilgamesh sighed through his nose, and Ardyn could feel the muscles of his stomach tense under his hand; it was surely an uncomfortable sensation, a combination of pain from the wound and the odd feeling of the sutures being pulled out.

Ardyn had both sides free in a matter of minutes, his fingers now bloody, the two pieces of thread deposited in a pile between them. He met Gilgamesh’s stare for a beat, looking for acknowledgement, and then laid his hand over the length of the wound.

He could feel muscles and skin knitting back together under the flow of his magic, Ardyn tilting his head as he worked, absentmindedly chewing on his lower lip. It didn’t take much, just a minute and some concentration, and then Ardyn pulled his hand away to reveal a scabbed over, very much _sealed_ wound.

“I think that should hold a little better,” he said, a little distant, “but maybe hold off on swinging the sword around for a few more days.”

“ _Finest medicus,_ ” Gilgamesh mused, holding out his soiled tunic for Ardyn to wipe his bloody hands on.

“Have I lived up to my title?”

“Not quite,” Gilgamesh replied, brusque, but there was a pinch of teasing to his voice. “I have yet to see what other fatal injuries you can pull me back from.”

Ardyn hummed his acknowledgment, wiping his fingers off on the beige linen tunic, the bloodstains dark and jarring on the light fabric. “Well, it’s only near fatal if you survive.”

Gilgamesh chuckled, Ardyn handing back the tunic, and Gilgamesh wadded it up in his hands rather than put it back on. They went back to staring at the lawn in silence, the insects clamoring around them, and Ardyn pushed his hair out of his face as the breeze picked up, the flame of his oil lamp struggling in the wind.

“I suppose I should wander back,” Ardyn murmured, cupping the flame as he picked up the chain. He stood, carefully picking up the oil lamp, watching where he swung it.

“Try not to get too lost,” Gilgamesh commented, rising from the bench to pull his sword free. Ardyn busied himself with the chain and the lamp, steading it so as to not light his clothes aflame, and when he looked back, Gilgamesh was holding his right hand out to him.

“A truce,” he said, and Ardyn flicked his gaze from Gilgamesh’s broad hand up to his face, a charming, genuine smile on his lips.

“A truce,” Ardyn repeated, feeling a bit out of sorts with this type of thing. He wasn’t a rough and tumble man the way his brother was, and these kinds of bonds and challenges had always been somewhat beyond him, expected because he was a man yet still foreign to him. Stuffing his wine cup into the hand holding the lamp, he held out his free hand to shake, but Gilgamesh instead grasped his forearm near his elbow, laying their arms alongside one another for a brief minute. His grip was firm, his hand dry and rough, calluses on his thumb and fingers, no doubt from wielding that sword and dozens of other weapons, and Ardyn was suddenly nervous about his clammy grip.

After a moment, Gilgamesh let go, the smile on his face waning to just a grin, and Ardyn awkwardly dropped his hand to his side, rooted to the spot as Gilgamesh gave him a nod, like he were a friend or a comrade and not an _occupier,_ and then turned off, sword in hand, trudging across the lawn to step under the veranda disappear into the darkness of the opposing hall.

_A truce._

Grounding himself, Ardyn pulled his lamp in and turned, walking back the opposite way.  



	2. Gilgamesh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not beta read; mistakes are my own.

For a brief time, things were quiet.

Life in the palace resumed some sense of normalcy, even with their added scores of guests. Gilgamesh was reminded of the times when his father would invite the provincial rulers to the palace, to make them pay tribute to him and the royal family, but this time, it felt as if Somnus had instilled himself in his father’s place, making them all guests in their own home.

Some days it was easier to ignore the Lucians than others. When Somnus called his retinue down to the camps they’d set up just outside the city, the field hospital and the extension of their barracks, the palace would be quiet and comfortable once more, and Gilgamesh could roam the halls freely, indulging in whatever activities he liked without feeling like he was being watched and supervised. Other days, they stayed in close proximity to the palace, which tended to turn the men boorish and pugnacious, harassing the servants and staff, and Gilgamesh had intervened on several occasions, using his title and his stature to send some of the officers scampering away with their tails between their legs.

Gilgamesh had no idea how long their occupation would last, weeks, maybe months, perhaps longer. It was impossible to tell, especially with Somnus as shrewd as he was. To him, everything was a sort of power play, a negotiating tactic, and he was absolutely unwilling to compromise any advantage he might have.

Until the Lucians left, there was little for him to do but bide his time and assist however he could, so as to facilitate their leaving sooner rather than later. He didn’t interact with them much, preferring to keep to himself, slowly reintroducing himself to his training now that the hole in his side had been reduced to a thick scar, courtesy of Ardyn, who remained the only Lucian that Gilgamesh had any sort of real contact with.

That scar still pained him, stiff and aching, as he moved about the yard today, a short, shield on his arm and a curved sword in his hand as he sparred against a phantom opponent. One of his youngest brothers, one just leaving boyhood into his teenage years, watched him, mimicking each of Gilgamesh’s strikes with a wooden training sword.

Gilgamesh had never been particularly close to his younger siblings─they didn’t share a mother, and the years between them meant that their interests never quite overlapped, but in recent years he’d developed a more fraternal attitude towards them. His older brothers he’d been quite close to as he grew up, until it was clear that the eldest was groomed for the crown, and the second groomed to study for the priesthood, leaving Gilgamesh out, cementing his spot on a lower tier than where they stood.

He’d become a warrior instead, blessed with stature from his strong mother, honing himself and training until he was sworn in among his father’s ranks of Immortals. It was admirable, he supposed, though he wondered just how much grace he’d been given as a son of the king, but he knew he’d never get a real answer to that.

But his younger brothers, especially, looked up to him, trapped in similar positions as he was─not high enough to be considered for ruling, yet not low enough to take up any trade. This one in particular had always been rambunctious and brash, and although he certainly had the energy and zeal to take up a sword, Gilgamesh knew he’d have to learn to heed instruction if he wanted to succeed.

With one final slice through the air, Gilgamesh finished his set, pausing to rest for a moment, rubbing that ugly scar on his side, trying to ease the pain from it. His brother showed no signs of slowing down, however, slashing and yelling as only a boy could, facing great and terrible monsters that existed only in his head.

After a beat, he seemed to grow bored of it, now that Gilgamesh was no longer striking at things, and he lowered his sword, drawing figures on the ground briefly. “Will you go again?” he asked pitifully.

“Once I’ve caught my breath, certainly.”

“You’re getting old,” his brother teased. “Soon you’ll be gray and hunched, just like my tutor.”

“And you won’t be far behind me.” Gilgamesh cracked a smile, straining to keep it on his face despite the stabbing pain in his side.

His brother scoffed, slashing at the air in an upward stroke, hopping once. He set about dashing through the yard once more, chasing a butterfly that had the misfortune of drifting through the training yard at this particular moment, swinging at it with his mock weapon. The ground beneath them was dusty and dry, hard, and his sandals clacked against it, small taps that echoed off the white limestone walls.

“Did you hear about the Lucians?” his brother chirped, skipping a few paces in pursuit of the butterfly before turning around in a particularly animated circle.

“I hear a great many things about the Lucians,” Gilgamesh teased, shifting his shoulder, and his brother rolled his eyes, his wooden sword falling to his side.

“Did you hear that they want to take us to see their cities? And to _live_ with them?”

Gilgamesh furrowed his brow and stopped. “I've heard nothing of the sort. Who told you this?”

“Sister.”

“And who told her?”

“The serious man, with the funny hair.”

“Long, or short?”

“Short,” his brother said, wrinkling his nose.

“And he said... To live with them? As in, to stay?”

“Yes.” His brother skipped ahead. “But he's a liar anyway. Father wouldn't let us go.”

Gilgamesh blinked a few times in the harsh light, trying to sift through what was the fanciful yarns and embellishments of a child and what were grains of truth in his brother's statement. It was very possible that his brother had misunderstood, or had spun this tale after having overhead a bit of an unrelated conversation, but there was also the very real possibility it was true. Hostages were a common tactic; Gilgamesh knew his father kept princes of small provincial kingdoms here with them to deter uprisings. It wouldn't shock him to hear that the Lucians had a similar practice.

But... He'd never fathomed being a hostage.

They would take him away from his people, his country, his culture, throw him in with some other hedonistic Lucian wealth to be forgotten about by both sides as the years would crawl on. The thought of leaving his shores permanently twisted Gilgamesh’s stomach into sharp knots—he had a life here, one he treasured, and now he could potentially be torn from it at the whim of a petty man.

“Why do they all have such short hair?” his brother asked, yanking Gilgamesh from his thoughts.

“I think it's their fashion,” Gilgamesh replied, trying to hide his internal turmoil.

“It looks stupid,” his brother said firmly. “They all do.”

“They're not all stupid,” Gilgamesh corrected, though he had a hard time believing that for himself.

“They are,” his brother replied, now resolute as only a child could be, completely assured of his own opinion. “And I hate them.”

_I hate them too, little one._

Gilgamesh didn't have a response to that. His brother was right, and they indeed had no reason to be kind to the Lucians at all; Gilgamesh knew he himself hated Somnus beyond any shadow of a doubt, but the thought of hating Ardyn was a little harder to grasp, especially after their night in the garden.

But one (or a few) good deeds didn't absolve him. He was still complacent in his brother's war machine, after all.

Gilgamesh had been dogged by thoughts of just how their first meeting would have ended had Somnus not arrived to disrupt their conflict. Would Ardyn have killed him, have committed to his strike and the damage dealt and seen it through? Or would Gilgamesh himself have finished what he’d begun, cut Ardyn down like he had so many of his countrymen without further thought? Surely there were other tapestries that had woven the threads of their fates differently, along those paths and others, and Gilgamesh wondered what those present realities looked like.

His brother took up attacking one of the training dummies at the edge of the yard, fierce strikes carried out through tiny arms, the wooden sword hitting the post of the dummy with a crisp _clack_ that rang out around the training yard, accompanied by the shouts and growls of a small boy. There was no doubt in Gilgamesh’s mind that to his brother this dummy was Somnus, was any Lucian he could get his hands on, lined up and ready to be cut down by the undefeatable, unstoppable sword only found in the heroic fantasies of small children.

Sighing, Gilgamesh set down his own sword. “I have to go, little one,” he said, his brother still focused on the dummy. Gilgamesh took one step towards him, leaning to reach over and ruffle his hair, his brother shrugging off the touch in an upstart fashion. “Gut a few more Lucians for me.”

His brother smiled wickedly, his interest in his own game renewed, and lunged at the dummy with a thrust, the blade hitting the wood and veering off. Gilgamesh set his jaw, and then took one step backwards before he turned to cut back across the yard and head into the palace.

\---

The city was still in turmoil.

Seated atop his dun, Gilgamesh struggled to navigate the main thoroughfare out from the palace gates. The streets were crowded and disorganized, full of those displaced by the conflict, injured and dying and otherwise homeless. The market had erupted into chaos at several points in time, riots and scuffles breaking out over food and other goods, and looting was rampant, despite the combined efforts of Somnus’ legionnaires and their own remaining guard.

He'd dressed down in a plain tunic and wool trousers, not wanting to attract any undue attention to himself. Gilgamesh knew he would be an easy target, to both those who would seek to exploit his status, and to those who would resent him for it. With affairs as they currently were, there was nothing more he could do to aid them, not with the Lucian dogs still hovering around.

But still, the sights of the crowds of hungry and homeless, of the injured left out in the streets, of burned buildings and defaced statues, churned Gilgamesh’s stomach. These were his _people_ , now being treated like cattle, subjugated and seen as disposable to these occupiers, and Gilgamesh had to simply sit and do as he was told.

The Lucians were still trying to wrangle control of the city, soldiers spread out through it on patrols, attempting to keep order and prevent any sort of large congregations of the citizens. The standing army had been abolished, including most of the old city guard, all told to give up their weapons and go home, which only served to increase the number of those walking the streets in desperation.

Gilgamesh continued down the fare, meandering among those stranded here, occasionally kicking back any persons who drew too close to his horse, hands outstretched, maybe seekng aid, maybe seeking to pull him down and steal his horse.

The market was worse, the begging crowds kept at bay by packs of Lucians, clearly bored with the occupation, and Gilgamesh knew boredom was dangerous in violent, brutal men like that, ones who were used to fighting and conquering and not keeping the peace. With the siege and occupation, the Lucians had taken over the ports and routes into the city, and now took their share before rationing the city’s grain to the surviving populous.

There were bodies that had been strung up along the main thoroughfare, most hung, a few crucified, all wearing wooden signs around their necks with crimes painted in white upon them in common, and in Gilgamesh’s tongue below them. The bodies made him pause, anger rushing through him, anger that these occupiers saw fit to pass judgment on his people and take their lives. All of it reeked of Somnus’ arrogance, of _Lucian_ arrogance, filtered down through the officers and men.

But GIlgamesh shook those thoughts from him, burying them shallowly for the time being, and continued on.

He was aware of all of the Lucians’ comings and goings from the palace, especially those of the senior officers. Ardyn and his brother were certainly easy to spot, with their matching red hair nearly flashing like a warning whenever Gilgamesh saw them. He knew Somnus spent his days near the barracks, which now housed most of the foreign legions, while Ardyn was occupied by the field hospital that had been set up at the edge of the city, treating the remaining wounded soldiers from the siege.

The ride out through the last plaza was quiet enough, though most of the buildings here were half collapsed and decrepit, burned out, with crumbling walls and sunken roofs. Inside there were still glimpses of haunting normality, bowls and cups set at tables, a bed, half made, ransacked shelves with missing slats. Were their occupants missing, injured, or worse, dead, Gilgamesh wondered.

The guards stopped him at the gates, as was to be expected; no one but the soldiers were permitted to leave or enter the city except under special circumstances. One of them had approached, hand on the hilt of his sword, noting the anxiousness of Gilgamesh’s dun, his stare flitting between the horse to Gilgamesh’s hands on the reins to finally his face. There were a handful of others

“No one’s allowed beyond the walls,” he said, plainly, rather slowly, probably anticipating that Gilgamesh had little to no grasp of common.

“I seek only brief access to your valetudinarium,” Gilgamesh replied, jerking his head in the general direction of the field hospital beyond the walls.

The soldier raised his brows at his response, no doubt taken aback by Gilgamesh’s command of their language, and then threw a glance back to the other guards closer to the gate. “The hospital?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

Gilgamesh straightened up as much as possible, trying to project the sense of regal authority that should go hand in hand with his birthright, the same one that had never come completely naturally to him.”I need to speak with Ardyn Izunia Caelum.”

The guard chuckled now, the kind of chuckle that clearly indicated Gilgamesh’s request was of an unusual and seemingly pointless nature. Gilgamesh kept his features stern, trying not to betray his cause by expressing his confusion. Military man or not, Ardyn was one of his brother’s right hand men, or so it seemed, but perhaps Gilgamesh had misunderstood his role in all of this, perhaps he had gone looking for the wrong man to seek counsel from.

“Wait here,” the guard said, and Gilgamesh nodded in the affirmative.

The guard waddled back to the group, and words were exchanged with the senior member (or at least, the one Gilgamesh assumed was the senior, with his helmet of a different make). He shifted in the saddle, waiting impatiently while they spoke, wishing he’d parked himself a few paces closer so that perhaps he could hear the discussion going on there. Instead, he busied himself looking at the damage done to the marble archways of the gate, chipped and shattered in large parts, the vines that had once covered it now reduced to black, ashy streaks, the finishing stones pulled away and smashed.

Maybe Ardyn had been the wrong person to go to, he mused. He clearly didn’t have any kind of command or rank, and perhaps even being a blood relative didn’t allow him so much sway over Somnus as Gilgamesh had previously thought.

Stupidly, maybe vainly, Gilgamesh thought back on their meeting in the garden a few nights prior, to the small spark of something he’d felt between them, not camaraderie, no, not that friendly, but perhaps an understanding of sorts. Ardyn had fixed him without question and seemingly without expectation in that garden, and for a moment they weren’t on opposite sides of a war, an occupation, they were just on opposite sides of a stone bench in a firelit garden.

_A truce,_ he thought.

The guard’s armor clanked as he approached, hand still on the hilt of his sword, an oddly satisfied, somewhat _shit eating_ grin carved into his features. “You leave the horse here,” he said, gesturing to Gilgamesh’s mount, “and you get an escort, but they’ll take you in.”

Gilgamesh gave him a hard look, but the guard just tilted his head slightly, accompanied by a tiny half shrug. “Do your superiors know who I am?”

“Oh, they do, your Highness, believe me,” the guard said, his voice steeped in sarcasm, lightly tapping the hilt of his sword as he spoke. “That’s why they’re letting you go at all.”

Gilgamesh drew in a steep breath through his nose, twisting his reins in his hands. “All right,” he replied, a bit snide, just to let this guard know what he thought of his orders, though the man seemed hardly to care beyond a raised brow. Instead, he just seemed decidedly bemused, something that dug further under Gilgamesh’s skin than it should have.

Fluidly, he dismounted, handing off his dun to the soldier, brushing off any protest as he walked towards the group. His escort was shoved towards him, two other legionnaires seemingly cut from the same cloth, career soldiers, tanned from the sun under various skies, wearing scars in every spot their armor didn’t cover. Gilgamesh wasn’t intimidated, not in the slightest; both of his escorts stood only up to his shoulder for all of their bluster and pomp.

He followed them down the well worn dirt path to the tents of the field hospital, a little cluster of waxed leather and canvas spread out like a village. There were bodies here, too, burned on large pyres just off to the side, the smell smoky and acrid, and Gilgamesh frowned upon seeing them, though the escorts were quick to hurry him along.

They stopped him in front of one of the larger tents, one ushering him inside, holding the leather flap open as the other followed. Gilgamesh went, blinking a few times to adjust to the dimness of the interior, greeted by the sight of a tight row of crude wooden beds, most with a soldier in them, in varying states of health. Faint groans and cries of pain echoed from all corners of the room, and Gilgamesh stood stock still for a moment, taking it all in.

Ardyn was easy enough to find.

His bright red hair caught a streak of the midday light from one of the high window-slits, glinting like a polished ruby as he stood over some poor fellow’s bed. Currently Ardyn was absorbed in the task of bracing said man’s arm in a splint, and Gilgamesh could make out the edge of a ragged wound where the bone had no doubt pierced the skin. He blinked a few times to push away the dull nausea that usually came with thinking about such injuries, shaking his head as a shiver ran down his spine.

“Sir,” one of the escorts said, taking a step forward. Ardyn finished his task, fastening the splint in place with a firm knot in the linen bandaging, and then turned slightly. His tunic was bloodstained, along with his hands, and a few smears along his jaw where he’d clearly touched his face without thinking. Somehow the look, as morbid as it was, seemed to suit him, more preoccupied with his work than appearances, and clearly not bothered by the hazards that came with his tasks. Gilgamesh supposed there was something to be respected in that mess.

“What’s all this?”

“He requested to speak with you, sir.”

“You’re dismissed,” Ardyn said abruptly, looking from one of the soldiers to the other.

“Sir─”

“I’ll return him to your custody, fear not,” Ardyn continued, stepping away from the bed. “I know I can handle him on my own.” He punctuated his sentence by with a grin and a pointed look in Gilgamesh’s direction, and Gilgamesh smiled, able to appreciate Ardyn’s gallows humor in the moment.

They exchanged looks, but filed out of the tent, one after the other. Meanwhile, Ardyn looked around the room, frowning at the handful of patients dotting it, one blood-streaked hand coming to cup his chin while he turned.

“I think, perhaps,” he began, tapping his index finger against his chin, leaving a fresh streak of blood on it, “we ought to find a more suitable place to speak, if you’re amenable.”

“Certainly.”

“Excellent. I needed a reprieve, anyway.” Ardyn motioned for Gilgamesh to follow, and he led him out a side door of the tent, waiting a beat at the doorway for Gilgamesh to catch up. For all that Somnus strutted about the palace as though it were his, _this_ was clearly Ardyn’s territory, and he moved with confidence that Gilgamesh hadn’t seen before this, leading him past one other long tent to a small canvas one.

Inside it was dim and almost cozy, if Gilgamesh were pressed to describe it, though the tent was clearly just a sort of storage space that Ardyn had converted into a refuge of sorts. A sturdy table took up the center of the room, dotted with various glass bowls and bottles, but were wooden crates and trunks stacked along the walls, and Ardyn beelined for one, heaving the lid open to pull out a rag and a leather drinking skin.

“Is everything all right?” he asked, and now that they were away from the others, there was real concern in his voice, Ardyn’s gaze dropping to Gilgamesh’s side before quickly roving over him, no doubt in search of some sign or symptom that might give a glimpse as to why Gilgamesh was here.

“I’m fine,” Gilgamesh said, and when that didn’t completely ease the worry off Ardyn’s face, he added a, “Everything is fine.”

Ardyn nodded slowly, reaching for a cotton rag to wipe his hands off on, digging between his fingers. “Am I to assume that this isn’t a social call, regardless?” There was a bright smile on his face, though, that maybe Gilgamesh was to read as friendly, but he supposed it could also be read as Ardyn’s relief at getting a break from the death and despair of the operating rooms.

“It’s... a bit of one.”

“Oh?” Ardyn stopped, brows raising in genuine, naked surprise, and from the way his mouth quirked back up in a poorly hidden grin, it was clearly a pleasant surprise.

“I’ve come because I have questions,” Gilgamesh clarified, and Ardyn nodded, the smile falling from his face, quickly replaced by a sort of professional neutrality.

Ardyn set the rag down, fingers lingering on it, leaning on the table for a moment. “Well, ask away, and I’ll do my best to answer.”

Gilgamesh sucked in a small breath, clasping his wrist behind his back, trying to make himself look as unimposing as possible. “I’ve heard talk─unsubstantiated talk, that is─of the possibility that my siblings might become hostages in your lands. I merely wanted to know if you had any insight into the matter.”

It was clearly something that caught Ardyn off guard, from how he pinched the top of the bridge of his nose and sighed. He looked down at the table for a beat before picking his head up to look at Gilgamesh, his expression weary and worn thin.

“Yes, it’s been discussed,” Ardyn admitted, flicking his gaze down once when Gilgamesh’s expression hardened.

“And?”

“And Somnus feels that such a solution would be for the best, to guarantee the security of our interests,” Ardyn finished.

“For the best?” Gilgamesh questioned, folding his arms over his chest now. “It’s hardly for the best to to rip them away from their homeland─”

“They’ll be perfectly safe and well taken care of.”

Gilgamesh set his mouth into a line, breathing heavily through his nose, nostrils flaring as he tried to contain his temper. “How many?”

“Four.” Ardyn cleared his throat, nervous under Gilgamesh’s stare that demanded more information. “The two boys from the second wife, one of the younger ones, and...yourself.”

Ardyn raked a hand through his hair as Gilgamesh stood there, quietly reeling, his brow drawn together in simmering anger, anger at this man before him, anger at his situation and his powerlessness over it, anger at fate that had steered him on this particular course.

“I’m sorry,” Ardyn said, voice heavy. “I didn’t think word would get out so quickly.”

Gilgamesh remained silent, not out of anger or sullenness but still letting Ardyn’s admission sink in, the apology mostly lost on him. He let his arms fall to his sides, fingers nervously curling and uncurling into fists, Gilgamesh grabbing the edge of his tunic to distract himself. He closed his eyes for a long moment, breathing steadily through his nose, trying to center himself.

All his emotion all spilled over in one moment, Gilgamesh snapping his eyes open and grabbing the nearest thing off the table between them, a glass bottle, turning and hurling it at the wall. It shattered spectacularly, breaking into a hundred pieces, the contents of the bottle leaving a dark smear on the wall. For a long moment, they both just stood in silence, Gilgamesh glaring at the dark stain on the wall, before his gaze tumbled down to the shattered glass on the floor. Behind him, Ardyn sighed, and Gilgamesh stole a glance at him from the corner of his eye, unwilling to face him just yet.

Ardyn’s expression was tense and anxious, though not fearful, his stare fixed on Gilgamesh’s own face, and inwardly Gilgamesh knew he had more than just this state of affairs to weigh him down. There were traces of remorse on his face, from his way his mouth turned down at the corners, jaw set, to how his brows were ever so slightly furrowed. Ardyn swallowed thickly, looking down at the table, red, messy hair tumbling into his face.

“Thank you for your honesty,” Gilgamesh said, every word an effort. “I’ll let you return to your work.”

He straightened up, nodded curtly once in Ardyn’s direction, and then smoothly stepped from the room.

\---

That knowledge became a burden.

It was all Gilgamesh could think about through the afternoon and into the evening, even after his return. Nothing seemed to hold his attention for longer than a few moments until that nagging dread would set back in, a million questions pushing out all of his other thoughts.

He needed to know. He needed to know how _real_ this was.

Ardyn had said it, yes, but Ardyn was not Somnus, and above all, Ardyn was not his _father,_ king of all these lands; if there were plans to pull Gilgamesh, third in line to the throne, from them, his father would know of it.

Though they were related by blood, Gilgamesh the third son of his father’s first wife (who had passed years ago, with the current Queen Consort the mother of his youngest half siblings), his father was not an _approachable_ man, not by any stretch of the imagination. His father was king, nearly a god in the eyes of the people, even more so in his own eyes, his power absolute and infallible, and it would be until he died. Gilgamesh had always felt small in his father’s gaze, even as he’d grown to tower over the man. There was something about his presence that commanded authority regardless of the situation, like it were the most natural thing to him.

Maybe it was. Maybe his father had been put upon this soil by the divines to rule over these people. Maybe that was the secret to their line.

Gilgamesh spent the late afternoon gathering his courage, until he had finally summoned enough of it to walk down to his father’s private dining room, where he knew his father and the Queen Consort were having supper. It was a lavish room, painted red on the insides, with white trim and frescoes on two of the walls, featuring the Astrals at play. He had statues to the Glacian and Eos herself near the doorways, the gods of the home, carved of basalt and polished o a beautifully smooth finish.

The guards outside the room recognized him instantly, bowing and letting him pass without hesitation. Gilgamesh lingered in the wide doorway, steeling himself that last little bit, and then stepped into the room.

His father sat at the head of the long table, covered in a massive spread, laden with fruits and roasts and breads, all wonderfully prepared and arranged, and cynically Gilgamesh knew his father would pick at it, take a few bites of his favorites here and there, and then let the rest go to rot. Seated beside him, dressed in the traditional deep yellow of mourning for her city and her people, was the Queen Consort, his father’s third wife. She was just as somber as he was, lowering her eyes as Gilgamesh approached the table.

He stopped a good distance away from his father, dropping to his knees and slipping into a deep bow, forehead pressed to the black granite of the floor, lingering there for a long, long moment, until his knees began to hurt from the floor and his back from the strain. Only then did he pick himself up, sitting first onto his heels, and then rising, keeping his head bowed as he took a few more steps towards the table.

Without his crown and royal dress his father seemed somewhat smaller, more towards “mortal” than “god”, but his icy, bored stare was still enough to cow Gilgamesh. His hair was cropped shorter, dusted heavily with gray, as was his beard, the telltale signs of a man slipping past his prime.

Gilgamesh remembered all the times he’d seen his father in full royal garb, addressing a crowd of thousands, stretching all the way as far as the eye could see─truly as close to a god as any of them would ever get. It was a far cry from how he sat now, an aging man at a quiet dining table, with only his wife for an audience.

“I apologize for intruding─” Gilgamesh began, gripping his wrist tighter behind his back.

“Don’t stand there gawking,” his father said, cutting him off, motioning towards the table as he waved his hand. “Come. Sit with us.”

One of the servants instantly detached themselves from the wall, rushing forward with a bench and placing it at the table for Gilgamesh to sit at, opposite the Queen Consort beside his father. He nodded in gratitude, and then sat, as the servant placed a dish before him, laden with his own fowl and other morsels.

“Get him some of the mutton,” his father instructed the servant, and a moment later a bowl was set in front of Gilgamesh, with mutton in a dark brown sauce. “Try it. Rather good tonight.” His father gestured to his own portion, and Gilgamesh nodded.

Carefully, he reached for the bowl, picking up the flat, golden spoon with the twisted handle, pushing the pieces of mutton around briefly before selecting one, scooping it up for a taste. It _was_ particularly good, moderately spiced yet still savory; his father hadn’t been exaggerating.

“So,” his father began, fussing with the fowl, “speak your piece.” He set his knife down, and looked straight at Gilgamesh for the first time since he’d entered the room.

Gilgamesh opened his mouth to protest, but his father just shook his head. “I know you didn’t come for the mutton, boy.”

Swallowing thickly, Gilgamesh sat up straight, bracing his hands on the table. “I have concerns regarding the negotiations with the Lucians that I would ask about.”

His father nodded, looking back to his fowl. “You and everyone else in this forsaken city.” His resulting laugh was dark, tinged with genuine anger, and Gilgamesh saw the creases beside his eyes catch the shadows, suddenly more prominent than he ever remembered them being.

“I’ve heard from the Lucian authority that we’re brokering a hostage exchange,” Gilgamesh said, reaching for one of the empty cups towards the center of the table, and a servant materialized at his side, pouring beer into it from a thick clay jug. “I had doubts as to the credibility of such a statement.”

“I wouldn’t call it much of an ‘exchange’, but, yes, it’s credible,” his father said, ending his sentence with a deep sigh as he picked up his knife once more.

“What exactly do you mean, not an exchange?”

So there was still a thin glimmer of hope, after all. Gilgamesh tried to contain his curiosity with a slightly overindulgent pull from his glass, the beer bitter and rich.

“Those Lucians are very fond of taking and not giving,” his father replied.

“So they’re taking hostages,” Gilgamesh commented, setting his cup down, “but not providing any?”

His father hesitated a moment before nodding, slowly rotating the knife in his grip. “They want to keep us under their heel,” he said, and there was that quiet simmering rage again, “and they’re certainly proficient at it.”

“You’re king; you couldn’t refuse?” Gilgamesh couldn’t bring himself to look over at his father, not after what he’d just said, with that open question of his credibility and power hanging in the air.

“I did refuse. No man wants to let foreigners take his children from his side.” From the corner of his eye, Gilgamesh saw his father’s grip tighten on the knife. “But what choice did I have, with their boot on my throat? I either let you be taken as hostages or as prisoners, and you know what the Lucians do to those they take back in chains.”

“They wouldn’t execu─”

“They _would._ Happily.” His father set the knife down. “They took my generals for such a thing.”

Silence settled over them, his father reaching for his own cup, draining it and then belligerently gesturing for one of the servants to refill it. Gilgamesh stared down at his own plate, at his reflection in the polished bronze, slightly warped by the curve of the dish, warped by the events that had brought him to this station in life.

“I won’t go,” Gilgamesh said. “I would sooner─”

“Sooner what? Fall upon your sword?” His father laughed, heartily, cruelly. “Your chance for a glorious death was out on the battlefield, and like a coward you came back to us on a leash.”

Gilgamesh winced slightly, feeling the gnarled scar in his side, the dull ache there that flared up from time to time to remind him of his failures, shutting his eyes to gather his composure. Beside him, his father sighed, deeply, and Gilgamesh heard the scrape of a plate against the dark wood table.

“You are my son, and a fine man as such,” he said, “but you are, above all, third in line for this throne. I can’t justify keeping you here to them, not when they asked for you by name.”

Gilgamesh opened his eyes, once more greeted with his reflection, the last thing he wanted to see in the world at this moment.

“They won’t keep you long, at any rate. You’re older, you’re not impressionable like your siblings. They’ll trade you out for someone younger in a few years, send you back and take someone else in your stead.”

It was a paltry comfort, Gilgamesh knew, but about the only one he had in this moment, the idea that he would be gone but a few years versus a lifetime.  A few years under the Lucian thumb he could manage, in their crowded city, speaking their crass tongue. A few years would fly by, and then he would return, and it would all feel like a distant memory, like a bad dream he’d woken from.

“Thank you,” Gilgamesh said, the weight of his sentence still settling on his shoulders. He stood, but his father gestured at Gilgamesh’s plate, still mostly full.

“Stay,” he instructed, and Gilgamesh sat, hesitant but not reluctant. It was rare to be welcomed at his table, and Gilgamesh knew better than to refuse. “Enjoy the comforts of your homeland while you have them.”

He laughed, his mirth still jaded, and motioned for the servant to refill Gilgamesh’s cup.

Gilgamesh didn’t object.

\---

Few betrayals hurt worse than this one.

It wasn’t even something Gilgamesh could properly label as a betrayal, because he had never been friends with Ardyn in the first place, so there was no real loyalty to betray, but he couldn’t help feeling _stupid_ for having trusted the Lucian, for having opened up to him that tiny fraction. Gilgamesh didn’t even know what involvement Ardyn had had in the hostage decision (but he did know they had asked for him by name, which mean that either Somnus or Ardyn had requested him), and Gilgamesh rationally knew that Ardyn probably had been his brother’s voice of reason in such a matter, but that realization counted for little. Ardyn was still a part of this system, of this force that had come here and upended everything, and Gilgamesh had been a fool for thinking he was possibly a bit different.

For the next four days, it was a tenuous dance between them, one of cold stares and bold ignorance, of veiled comments made in the presence of the other or of convenient abuses of a language barrier. Several times Gilgamesh had changed his plans to avoid bumping into Ardyn or even seeing him, finding that just the thought of running into him or having any kind of contact put a knot in the bottom of his stomach.

Instead, he threw himself back into the vestiges of his old life, the things he’d been forced to set aside for the last few weeks as the Lucians had the run of the palace, seeking it as a distraction to his own impending misfortune. Overnight, with his grievous wound now substantially less grievous (though still painful and tender), he resumed training with his father’s personal guard, the trusted, battered group of Immortals his father held dear. They were a rowdy bunch, and Gilgamesh was particularly close to a handful of those around his own age, ones he’d known since boyhood and had grown up alongside, sharing most of their childhoods and adolescence with him.

And some had shared other things, too, quiet, stolen moments in dark, deserted hallways or empty rooms.

Seamlessly, they welcomed him back in, teased him over the wound he’d received (though Gilgamesh knew beneath it all they had been worried for him) and tossed him around the yard a bit, getting him back into form, before breaking off to drink and dine in one of the lower kitchens. The Lucians had taken the finer dining rooms for themselves, but this lot was content to eat wherever there was food, and certainly content to drink wherever there was any kind of drink to found.

Now they all shared the bonding experience of suffering under the collective Lucian thumb, and Gilgamesh had heard dangerous whispers among his group, rumors of plots to get back at the Lucians, to drive them from the city and bring them to their knees. Though he understood the base sentiment of it all, yearning himself to shed the yoke of their occupation, the reality of such a thing wasn’t so easy, wasn’t so cut and dried, and Gilgamesh ignored those murmurs each time they reached his ears.

But others talked, and Gilgamesh prayed their voices never reached Somnus’ ears.

Their gatherings became an afternoon ritual the way it had been for a great portion of Gilgamesh’s adulthood, spending his evenings with these men in light reverie after a rough day spent in the yard. He wasn’t needed for any of the negotiations or arrangements, and the physicality of his days, coupled with leisure among his own countrymen, without a Lucian in sight, served as a very effective panacea to the stresses that had been plied on him.

Of course Ardyn would come along to spoil it all.

They’d taken up in one of the servants’ dining quarters, off the largest kitchen, and Gilgamesh had just poured himself a second beer, seated towards the end of one of the long benches, listening as someone further down the table recalled a story of watching the Lucians struggle with setting up encampments on the north side of the city, just outside the walls, where the soil was soft, sprawling into a dune further out.

Gilgamesh had smiled and snorted as appropriate, having recently discovered a love of any content that featured these Lucians being taken down a peg. The thought of Somnus supervising struggling men who had no idea how to deal with the sinking, soft soil, losing supplies as they warped under the desert heat, lifted his spirits more than it probably should have.

And then the table had gone quiet, and Gilgamesh had looked to his left to see Ardyn in the doorway, dressed down in beige robes with a thick gray cloak over his shoulders. A leather bag hung at his side, the strap wound over one shoulder, his hands gripping it as he waited for their attention.

Gilgamesh cocked a brow at him, and Ardyn took two steps forward, approaching the end of the table, eyes locked on him.

“I’ve need of you,” he said, shutting his eyes as he corrected himself, clearly noting Gilgamesh’s wide grin at his phrasing and no doubt sensing the impending joke at his expense. “I’ve need of a translator and the others are occupied.”

“My services aren’t for hire, translating or otherwise,” Gilgamesh replied in common, cocky, selling his performance for the table, a majority of whom spoke no common whatsoever and could only read the situation off his demeanor. “I believe your brother has some in his employ.”

“I’m sorry, are you refusing me?” Ardyn’s voice had a vicious edge to it that Gilgamesh hadn’t heard until now, one that surprised him, and he blinked once in shock.

“I am,” he replied, undeterred, maintaining his confidence.

“Then I compel you, under order of the Lucian standard, and I would also remind you that should you refuse again, I may paint you in a rather unflattering light when discussing your place as a hostage of the state with my brother.”

Ardyn didn’t stumble at all throughout the threat, casually breezing through it just like Somnus would have, and his words made the blood in Gilgamesh’s veins boil instantly. They were truly cut from the same cloth, Gilgamesh realized, and he’d absolutely been wrong to assume Ardyn were any different.

Gilgamesh paused, considering his answer, fingers curled into light, tenuous fists, hovering just inches above the table, his drink between them. Given the state of things between them, he didn’t think it was a particularly idle threat from Ardyn, but talk was one thing, action another.

“Well? Your answer?” Ardyn folded his arms over his chest expectantly. Gilgamesh met his stare, cold fury and simmering hatred, not as burning as it had been that day they’d collided on the field, but a different sort of loathing, one more insidious now that he truly _knew_ his opponent.

“I accept,” Gilgamesh said, curt and clipped.

“Good,” Ardyn replied, almost absentmindedly, and Gilgamesh wondered if he’d been expecting him to refuse a second time, even in the wake of that threat. “Come with me.”

Gilgamesh frowned, looking down to his drink, quickly scanning the table to his sides, before standing, turning and stepping out over the bench as laughter exploded around him from his companions. He could hear their comments as he followed Ardyn out of the room, bits and pieces of the conversation, everything from insinuations that Gilgamesh was heeling to his new masters like a dog, to speculation that Ardyn might have less than savory intentions with him, but all of that, of course, was lost on Ardyn, who didn’t speak a word of their tongue.

Gilgamesh grit his jaw, determined to let neither party get a rise out of him, but failing poorly at that. Instead he tailed after Ardyn, through dark halls, Ardyn walking quickly, anxiously, like he were afraid they would be caught.

_By the Six, what was he up to?_

“Where are we going?” Gilgamesh asked, planting his feet and stopping. Ardyn, too, halted a few feet ahead of him, glancing once over his shoulder.

“I have business in the city,” he answered coolly, “and I need an honest translator.”

_So you force my silence as to whatever your schemes are._

He stood rooted to his spot, trying to figure out just _what_ Ardyn would be up to that would warrant such secrecy, when Ardyn turned and motioned for him to go.

“Don’t dally,” he hissed, resuming his brisk pace down the hall.

Sighing, Gilgamesh resumed his walk, accompanying Ardyn down the last few halls to the stables, dark and quiet, bathed in the moonlight from above and two blazoning braziers at the front doors. The stablehands were gone, though Gilgamesh knew he could summon them, but before he could even have real thoughts on the matter Ardyn had slipped inside one of the stalls, throwing tack onto a sable mare.

“Tack your own,” he said, gesturing to the other stalls when Gilgamesh just stared at him.

“Less suspicious if we only take one horse,” Gilgamesh countered.

“And have you push me from the saddle in the middle of the city and leave me there?” Ardyn snorted. “I think not.”

“With two I could simply ride off.”

“A risk I’m far more willing to take.” Ardyn slipped the bit into his sable’s mouth, then pulled the bridle around her face. “You’re heavier, anyway; I’d catch up to your poor sod of a horse.”

Gilgamesh chuckled, both at Ardyn’s comment and at the absurdity of the situation at large, shaking his head and looking skywards as he stepped into his own stall. He had his own horse, a skewbald stallion, one of the bigger ones in the stable, tacked in a matter of minutes, leading it out onto the dirt path that ran from the stables to the gate at the north of the gardens.

Ardyn was already there, sizing up his horse, trying to figure out just how to mount the damn thing, clearly not used to the sort of saddle that was common out here. Gilgamesh considered mocking him a little further, maybe rubbing more salt into the wound, but ultimately he settled for just climbing effortlessly atop his own skewbald, watching Ardyn continue to struggle from atop his perch.

Just when Gilgamesh was ready to give up, hop down and hoist Ardyn onto his horse in the ultimate act of humiliation, Ardyn managed to hop up and swing his leg over, settling himself into the saddle. He looked to Gilgamesh, clearly a little flustered that Gilgamesh had been watching (and enjoying) his foibles.

But he quickly pulled himself together, jerking his head towards the path and the gate, and then kicking his horse into a trot. Gilgamesh set off after him, out into the darkness, his skewbald following Ardyn’s mount. Inwardly, Gilgamesh wondered how Ardyn would handle the gate, as there were no doubt guards posted there, but Ardyn continued on, aware of his surroundings and still moving at a brisk pace.

They passed under the gate without a word, and Gilgamesh caught sight of a small cluster of men further down in the garden, one of them with a jug in his hand─drinking on duty, no doubt.

“None of them ever stay at their posts,” Ardyn murmured, halting his sable for a moment, and Gilgamesh looked back to him as Ardyn raised his brows, jaded, reaching back for his hood and pulling it over his head.Still staring out at the men, he sighed once before tightening his grip on the reins and kicking himself off into a sudden canter.

Gilgamesh followed suit, not one to be outdone, quickly catching up to Ardyn, the two of them scampering down the dirt road through the surrounding grounds to the palace. The grounds had become overgrown in the last few weeks, the grasses untidy, the trees in need of pruning, but in the night air, under the silver dusting of light from the moon, none of that seemed to matter, or to even be of note.

They crossed through the lower outer walls, out onto the road, Ardyn pulling his horse back into a light trot. Gilgamesh followed him, navigating the narrow streets, noting that Ardyn deliberately avoided heading onto any of the bigger streets. There were Lucian patrols out, enforcing the curfew they’d instated upon formal occupation of the city, and Ardyn no doubt wanted to avoid them; if they were stopped, Ardyn could no doubt pull rank, but being seen after dark alone in the city with a foreign guide would certainly inspire talk.

By means of quiet backstreets they made their way to the lower city, and finally Gilgamesh could see the looming gate of the Temple of Shiva (as the Lucians called her; his people knew her by a different name) stretching towards the sky before them. Gilgamesh hedged his bets that it was Ardyn’s destination, and it came as no small surprise when Ardyn led them to the temple grounds.

Shiva was the mother, protector of the innocent and healer to the infirm and ill─of course Ardyn would come here. His own people lacked hospitals the way the Lucians had them, with their valetudinarium and other centers; instead the sick and injured came to the temple to seek treatment. Under it all there hadn’t been any nefarious schemes, any kind of illicit activities from Ardyn; instead it all boiled down to an act of charity.

Somehow, Gilgamesh was strangely resentful about that.

He dismounted, hitching his horse to a scraggly sort of tree while Gilgamesh remained in his saddle, looking over the quiet, long walk to the temple, lined with statues, most of which had been defaced by now, heads and limbs broken off, ugly words in common carved onto them. Before, they’d borne beautiful banners strung between them, matching the ones draped down from the towers, all of them catching the breeze and billowing in a beautiful splash of color against the white limestone of the temple. Now they looked like corpses lining the road.

Ardyn was looking at him expectantly when Gilgamesh pulled himself from his thoughts, quickly dismounting and haphazardly tying his horse to the same tree. By the time he’d finished, Ardyn had already started wandering down the stretch up to the temple, shuffling along the dusty path, his hands clasping the strap of his bag once more as he looked from statue to statue.

He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Gilgamesh’s footsteps as he approached, and Ardyn’s gaze was, for a moment, remorseful, almost apologetic, and he opened his mouth as if to say something before thinking better of it.

Whatever he’d meant to say, it was probably best left unsaid, Gilgamesh thought, taking the lead, unwilling to have Ardyn in his sights as a reminder of those who had defiled this holy spot.

He waited on the marble steps for Ardyn, watching the flames dance in the two iron braziers outside, slipping into the under the gate to head into the colonnade. He could already hear the cries and moans of those inside, but nothing could quite prepare him for the sight as he moved further in.

The sick and injured, who came seeking refuge at this site, and were normally kept at the sanctuary at the back, cared for but out of sight, now had come to spill over the whole temple. There were stretchers and makeshift beds all over the colonnade, with priests and priestesses attending to select patients, and Gilgamesh could see more bodies in the back, dotting the pronaos and the hypostyle hall. Gilgamesh came to an abrupt stop, shocked by it all, his gaze roving between the beds, over women, children, the elderly, dozens and dozens of injured, some bandaged and tended to, others still lying in anguish.

Ardyn appeared in his periphery after a long moment, stealing a quick look at Gilgamesh, one he noticed from the corner of his eye. Gilgamesh turned to look at him head on, but Ardyn kept his gaze fixated on the pronaos, a horizon to this sea of the infirm.

“The priests tell me which ones are the worst, and I start with those,” Ardyn said and Gilgamesh chewed the corner of his mouth, wondering just how long Ardyn had been coming here. “I may need your help to speak to some of the sick, too.”

“Of course,” Gilgamesh replied, and there was no fight to his voice, no anger, just a sort of quiet resignation.

“I suppose we can just... jump right in,” Ardyn said, sucking in a quick little breath and rolling his shoulders before he moved off to speak to one of the priests.

Gilgamesh let him get a good lead before he followed.

\---

Ardyn was nothing if not dedicated.

Gilgamesh watched him move from patient to patient, never slowing down, giving the same level of care no matter the severity of the injury. They'd started with the most grievous cases, at the discretion of the head priest, who showed them to the critically injured ones who had been isolated to the sanctuary. Ardyn had gone through several surgeries, amputating a limb, setting other broken bones, suturing deep gashes and cauterizing others.

Mostly he worked by himself, often pulling in help from one of the other priests or priestesses, but on a few occasions Gilgamesh stepped in when the others were occupied, even though Ardyn had repeatedly told him he didn't need to, that all he'd brought him here to do was translate. It wasn't hard─hold a limb steady, hand over a tool, press the edges of a wound closed─but the sight of such horrid injuries, beyond the scrapes and gashes he'd seen and had in the training yard, especially now in a medical context, did nauseate Gilgamesh a bit, and he wondered how Ardyn didn't seem bothered by it at all. Was it a tolerance he'd acquired through years of work and study? Or had he always been like that, able to stomach the sight of blood and viscera without batting an eye?

The hardest were children, and even Ardyn seemed humbled after each one, his jaw set, brow furrowed in a tense ridge, mouth drawn into a thin line. They'd both had to take a moment after dealing with a young girl who expired in front of them, her skull cracked so badly Gilgamesh had seen her brain when Ardyn had taken away the bandages. She was too far gone for even his magic to touch, because Gilgamesh saw him try, laying a hand on the crown of her head, his face falling moments later when he realized it wouldn't work.

There were others he could save, and did, and Gilgamesh watched him cure internal injuries and seal the deepest parts of gashes when the priests weren't around. Ardyn was careful and moderate, yes, but he wasn't selfish, and Gilgamesh knew there were scores of patients here who wouldn't have survived if not for his gifts and intervention.

By the time they'd seen the worst of the patients, the ones who truly needed a doctor's touch and not just a gentle set of hands and a bandage, they were well past the witching hour, and Gilgamesh could feel the exhaustion that had settled deep in his bones with every step he took, meandering slowly around the hypostyle. Silver-white moonlight shimmered on the surface of the water, occasionally shattered by disturbances in the pool, and the marble in the room gleamed brightly under the cold light. The room was deserted now, most of the patients moved either to the sanctuary or to the colonnade out front, if they were well enough; the only noises to curb the eerie silence came from the burning of the brazier and the furious swishing and splashing of Ardyn.

Ardyn was on his knees at the edge of the pool in the center of the room, leaning over the ledge to reach the water, his left arm submerged under it, the right scrubbing at the blood covering his forearm from fingertips to elbow. It seemed so odd to see the pool, normally reserved for festivities and offerings, now stained red, with this doctor (excuse him, _medicus_ ) dowsing off in it, the tacky blood coming away as bold red swirls lazily winding through the water. He’d rinsed his tools off first, replacing them in the leather satchel, and now took to cleaning off his arms and hands, though his robes still bore prominent bloodstains.

“How long have you been coming here?” Gilgamesh asked, rounding the corner and finally sitting down on the edge beside Ardyn, looking at the surface of the water. A few moldy flower petals bobbed on its surface, tiny ships lost at a turbulent sea, and Gilgamesh frowned, recalling the splendor of seeing fresh blossoms float across the clean, sparkling pool, shocks of color against a gray-blue canvas.

“A little more than a week,” Ardyn admitted. Gilgamesh thought back, realizing that Ardyn had started coming immediately in the wake of their spat. He raised his brows slightly.

“Who’s been translating for you?”

“The woman my brother uses,” Ardyn replied, lifting his arm from the water, frowning at it. There were still streaks of blood on it, wound between his fingers and over his wrist, and he plunged it back under a moment later. “I bribed her to ensure her silence.”

“Bold.”

Ardyn shrugged. “If she told him, he’s not liable to believe her over me, regardless.”

“He would punish you for this?” Gilgamesh looked over, incredulous, but Ardyn didn’t meet his gaze, so he resumed staring out at the pool.

“He wouldn’t punish me, no, but, well, he wouldn’t be happy about it, that’s for certain.” He pulled his hand out again, more satisfied this time, and then switched arms, dipping his right below the surface. “Doesn’t look good to be aiding the enemy you’ve set out to subjugate.”

“But you trust me not to tell him.”

“If you’re wise, you wouldn’t,” Ardyn cautioned. “Somnus would take your presence here, your aid, as a sign of rebellion against him, and he’s liable to have a hand for that, if not worse.”

Gilgamesh didn’t say anything to that, instead resting his hands on his knees, taking note of all the little scars and knicks he’d accumulated on them over the years, tiny reminders of mistakes that he shouldn’t make again. Hazily he wondered if there would ever be a scar on him as a reminder of all this, of his dalliance and misplaced trust, but after tonight Gilgamesh wondered if maybe his trust hadn’t been so misplaced.

“Thank you for coming and helping, regardless.” Ardyn’s voice was distant, tight, already relaying the bricks that had come down on the wall between them.

“What would you have done if I had refused to come?”

Ardyn went still, leaning back to sit on his heels and stare at Gilgamesh for a beat. “I would’ve gone by myself. The priests know me by now, and I can gesture well enough to get my point across,” he answered, voice low, distractedly brushing some of his hair back from his forehead with his clean hand. “I wouldn’t have spoken to Somnus, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“You might not want to admit it was an idle threat so early,” Gilgamesh replied, wryly. “There might come a time when you need me again.”

“I’m sure I can come up with a new, equally idle threat, should such an occasion arise,” Ardyn retorted, submerging his hand once more, swishing it around in the water before reaching down to scrub it.

Gilgamesh snorted. “I’ve no doubt.”

They both fell silent thereafter, the tiny flame of their conversation snuffed out by the douter of awkwardness, and the room was quickly filled with the soft sounds of the water sloshing about and the insects singing merrily outside in anticipation of the morning. Gilgamesh watched Ardyn via his reflection in the pool, one frequently broken up due to his churning the water, but a clear enough picture nonetheless.

It was harder to simply hate him now, to feel _nothing_ else or any conflict about it, because it was evident that Gilgamesh’s mistake had not been in trusting Ardyn, but had been in assuming that Ardyn and his brother were one in the same. Gilgamesh wasn’t sure he _liked_ that sort of reservation─it was easier to just write the Lucians off as one whole group, in his mind, even if Ardyn’s actions might give him some kind of hope for an understanding.

His knees creaking in protest, Gilgamesh stood, leaving Ardyn to finish up. He strode slowly through the pronaos, back through the colonnade, and then out to the front, standing just outside the gate, on the stairs leading back down to the road up. Gilgamesh could sense the first rays of dawn circling just below the horizon in the east as he meandered back and forth in the colonnade. The air had changed, thicker, more humid, a sort of static hanging in it, one of anticipation of the new day, and he stopped and stared out down across to the delta and the palace, wondering how many more times he’d get to see them.

The jingling of Ardyn’s tools and his footsteps shattered the bubble of Gilgamesh’s thoughts, but instead of just proceeding down the stairs Ardyn stopped beside him, looking out at the horizon himself for a beat. How different was it from his own home, Gilgamesh wondered. He’d heard tales of their capitol, Lucis, of a great, hot, crowded city of tangled streets, but it was hard to picture nonetheless.

_You’ll see for yourself soon enough._

“I’ll have my brother’s translator back tomorrow,” Ardyn murmured, the wind blowing his unruly hair into his face. “We should get back before the morning patrols come out.”

He didn’t say anything further, the two of them just standing on the stairs in silence, Ardyn shifting to balance himself over two stairs. Eventually, he turned to Gilgamesh, who looked at him curiously and a bit expectantly, his arms folded over his chest.

With his mouth twisted to the side in anxiety and uncertainty, gaze flitting nervously between the ground and Gilgamesh’s face, Ardyn slowly extended his arm out, like they had that night in the garden. Gilgamesh stared down at it, and then at Ardyn, who had picked his head up, giving Gilgamesh a lopsided, oddly endearing _fuck it_ sort of grin, one that was shockingly _earnest._

Gilgamesh chuckled, a bit cynically, and then grasped his arm.

\---

  
The realization that Gilgamesh would be pried from his home shores was becoming more of a reality day by day, as he watched Somnus install his own men in positions of power within their bureaucracy, as tax collectors and census takers and other such spots, to fully bring his kingdom under the Lucian banners. His father’s power had been futher curbed, made subservient to Somnus and his _republic,_ and Gilgamesh always had to laugh at the notion of such a governance, left to the common masses to decide most affairs. _How could they be trusted?_ he wondered.

Soon their whole nation would be just a puppet state to the Lucians, an extension of their power, one designed to pay taxes and tribute and otherwise left to its own devices, so long as they _obeyed._ The thought saddened Gilgamesh beyond words─to see his proud people now reduced to huddling masses trying to pull themselves together, no longer in charge of their own fate, broke him in a way he couldn’t articulate. It was in those moments that he understood the anger of those who plotted behind closed doors, driven by sheer fury and a desire for vengeance and bloodlust.

The thoughts followed him for the next few days, reminders from both sides springing up at inopportune moments. Gilgamesh had never been one to handle this sort of stress well; his life had always been more of a straightforward set of duties, especially as the third son, expected to be a part of the pomp and circuitry, but never with any real expectations draped on him. But now there would be such expectations, he knew, a great deal of them, policing his behavior under his Lucian hosts, a dog on a leash.

And so he let himself linger in that liminal spot, loath to confront his eventual uprooting, yet now unwilling to return to the echoes of his old life.

Instead, he fell in with Ardyn, finding him an odd parallel to his own situation, kept in a foreign land, against his will (to a degree; Somnus, as Ardyn told him, had a habit of keeping Ardyn near, under the pretense of keeping Ardyn safe and guarding his secret, and he was hard to say no to). Things were no longer so frigid between them, and two days after their excursion, Gilgamesh had cornered Ardyn as he returned from the valetudinarium and asked him, rather frankly, if he would let Gilgamesh accompany him and translate for him going forward.

Ardyn had been caught off guard, which was to be expected, given their history, but he’d agreed, and rather readily at that. They’d met in the stables that night, Gilgamesh having tacked two horses by the time Ardyn came down, and ridden off in the night to the Temple.

It was to be the first of a string of nights spent in such a fashion.

Out on their excursions, removed from the tethers of company and culture pulling them to their respective sides, with just the two of them, Ardyn proved to be somewhat personable company. He was full of a cynical, jaded wit that Gilgamesh quickly came to appreciate, not as dry and stuffy as the other Lucians Gilgamesh had spoken with at the palace, including Somnus.  

Bit by bit they opened up on both sides, Ardyn genuinely intrigued by Gilgamesh’s people and culture, frequently peppering him with questions in regards to their customs, their history, their beliefs, even picking up a few phrases from their tongue. And he listened intently, too, when Gilgamesh answered, not waiting to just brush off whatever Gilgamesh said, to offer some dismissal of Gilgamesh’s people as barbaric or backwards and posit his own culture, Lucian culture, as superior.

And Gilgamesh, in turn, asked him about Lucis, about their capitol, about if the things he’d read of Lucians were true. Ardyn answered honestly (or at least as far as Gilgamesh could tell), and put to bed some fears he’d had, while stirring up new ones.

But their questions never turned _too_ personal─that was a bridge they had yet to cross, truly delving into one another’s lives, and it was one that Gilgamesh wasn’t sure that they ever would. Ardyn had shared a few stories from his childhood, and some of his opinions on his own culture and affairs, and Gilgamesh had done the same in turn, but they were both loath to open up further at this stage.

Gilgamesh was curious about Ardyn, certainly─how could he not be at this point, with all they’d shared, with knowing Ardyn’s well kept, dangerous secret? And he had no doubt that Ardyn was in turn intrigued by him, from how  he’d open his mouth at times to ask a question and then think better of it, or how his eyes would narrow when Gilgamesh spoke, as if wondering just how much of his reasoning had been derived from Gilgamesh’s personal experience. Yet he knew it was for the best that some of their walls stay up, especially now, with the situation still relatively volatile. What they had between them was good enough, he reasoned.

He kept his questions to himself, instead sitting beside Ardyn in the sanctuary of the temple, watching Ardyn quietly and discreetly set a man’s leg, ease the bone back through the wound it had left, and then seal the wound with his magic, enough to scab over and stop the bleeding. Inwardly, Gilgamesh wondered what it was like to grow up with such a gift, one that Ardyn very clearly wanted to use but had to hide, lest he be vilified for it. Ardyn had made an offhand comment a few nights ago about studying philosophy (“Who wouldn’t want to spend their days prattling and drinking and spinning truths found at the bottom of a wine cup?”), and ever since then Gilgamesh had been wondering if training as a formal _medicus_ had not been his desired path.

Ardyn finished on the leg, setting it in a splint, giving instructions to one of the priestesses on how to watch the man in the coming days, looking for any signs of infection or aspiration of the marrow. Gilgamesh translated, occasionally having to pause to converse with Ardyn to clarify the meaning of a word he didn’t know, or to elaborate on a rough explanation, clearing it up for the priestess. He was fine conversing in common, but medical terminology, organs and diseases and symptoms, was a whole specific set of vocabulary he rarely needed to use, even in his native tongue, and it was taking him a bit to get the hang of things, though each day got easier.

They took a break thereafter, Ardyn wiping off his bloody hands as he continued to explain the intricacies of winemaking, something Gilgamesh knew nothing of, beyond that it came from pressed grapes. The room was quiet, just a handful of patients, most of whom were asleep or had been sedated to treat their pain. As the innermost part of the temple, it had survived the siege rather well, the statue in the center unharmed, now surrounded by fresh offerings, flower petals and bowls of food and fruit laid out to the goddess. Sconces mounted on the walls gave enough light to see by, a warm orange glow that still left deep shadows in most spots.

“So why go to the trouble to ferment it if you’re just going to water it down?”

“It’s not...” Ardyn twisted the rag in his hands, searching for words. “It’s just very strong, is all. The water helps make it a bit more reasonable.”

Gilgamesh shook his head. “The stronger the better.”

“Perhaps, but I prefer to be able to drink near an open flame and not worry about my keeping my eyebrows,” Ardyn commented, chuckling as Gilgamesh blinked in shock.

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” Ardyn said, grinning. “I’ve seen it happen, cups catching on fire when they’re too close to a lamp. Some were even already watered down.”

“How do you people even get anything done, then? How are you not all lying face down in the streets all the time?”

“What a presumption,” Ardyn said, with a slight teasing scoff to his voice. “And you just drink small amounts. A bit at breakfast, a bit at lunch, a little more with dinner. We’re not walking around with decanters in hand all day.”

Gilgamesh cocked a brow, a knowing smile playing on his lips. Ardyn held it together for just a moment before he laughed, rolling his eyes slightly as he looked away.

“It’s not _in_ my hand, in fairness,” he corrected, “just─”

“─just within reach.”

Ardyn wadded the rag into one hand, pointing at Gilgamesh with his index finger. “Precisely.” He resumed cleaning his hands off, digging under his nails as Gilgamesh shifted on the floor beside him.

“I will say I’m tempted by it,” Gilgamesh admitted, and Ardyn flicked his gaze back up at him, “but I can’t guarantee─”

He fell silent at the sound of something crashing in the hypostyle, followed by a woman’s screams and then a man’s voice, one he didn’t recognize, shouting loudly. Gilgamesh was on his feet in a second, boots scuffing on the stone floor, and Ardyn was struggling up after him, knocking his tools aside as he tried to stand.

“Stay here,” Gilgamesh said, holding his hand up in Ardyn’s direction for just a moment before he padded towards the doorway. With no hesitation he pulled back the cotton curtain that functioned as a door, letting it fall shut in his wake as he walked out of the sanctuary into the hypostylum.

He wasn’t sure what to expect, really, but the sight of one of the priestesses on the ground, on the other side of the room, sobbing, still stopped him in his tracks. Around her were six men, armed, clad in dark plated armor, and although Gilgamesh did not know their faces he knew their _type,_ from their builds and demeanor. These were his father’s soldiers, part of the troops that had fought against the siege only to be disbanded after by the Lucians, their weapons confiscated. They were soldiers, not famers or merchants, and most wouldn’t know how to return to a normal life and a trade; of course they would congregate, resentful, of course they would try and take back what had been theirs.

One of them shouted at the priestess, a man with shorter hair and gray in his beard, asking her which of the patients were foreign, warning her not to hide them, his words harsh. Another had his sword drawn, keeping one of the two of the priests and one more priestess against the wall, all of them silent. The others checked the patients on the floor, looking, no doubt, for any Lucian stragglers who might have ended up with the sick here.

“ _There are none here!_ ” the priestess shouted from the floor, and the man interrogating her angrily kicked one of the platters of offerings beside her, sending it skidding across the floor and into the pool. The priestess flinched, and the other woman against the wall made to comfort her, but the man with the sword eyed her, and she stayed put.

Gilgamesh stepped further into the room, the pool between them, his steps deliberate as to make his presence known. “ _This is a holy place,_ ” he said, calm, his hands at his sides, stopping just before the pool. “ _What business do you have here?_ ”

The leader straightened up, squaring his shoulders as he sized up Gilgamesh, recognition clear on his face. “ _Tonight we take our city back from the Lucian savages that stormed our walls,_ ” he said, calm and collected, and Gilgamesh pulled his chin slightly to his chest, swallowing thickly. “ _We seek only the Lucians hidden here among the sick and injured, that we may weed them out._ ”

“ _There are none here._ ”

“ _Come now, prince,”_ he replied, stepping past the priestess to approach the opposite edge of the pool. _“We both know that to be untrue. Won’t you join us? Think of how proud your father and everyone will be, when they see how you helped put down these Lucian mongrels._ ”

“ _I ask you to leave this house,_ ” Gilgamesh countered. _“It is a bad omen to spill blood in a Temple of the Glacian._ ”

The man chuckled, and almost as if on cue, Gilgamesh heard the sharp slaps of Ardyn’s sandals on the floor as he rushed into the hypostyle hall, and he turned to just in time to watch Ardyn come to an abrupt stop, his eyes wide with surprise as he took stock of the hall.

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking directly at Gilgamesh, before redirecting his attentions to the man across the pool.

“ _‘There are none here,’”_ the leader mocked, resting one hand on the pommel of his sword, the other hooked in his belt. “ _Seems there’s at least one._ ”

“Talk about unfortunate timing,” Ardyn said jokingly, though there was very real fear underpinning his voice. The leader jerked his head in Ardyn’s direction, and two of the men broke off to grab him, Ardyn whipping around as he was cornered. As one made to grasp his arm, Ardyn struck, drawing back and stabbing him in the juncture of neck and shoulder with something small and narrow─a scalpel, Gilgamesh realized as the man stumbled back, held against Ardyn’s bracer to keep it hidden.

He hadn’t been quick enough to hold into it, however, and now was defenseless as the second man grabbed him, at the arm, Ardyn struggling to get free, clawing at this man’s face with his free hand. It lasted for but a second, and then the man swung the bronze oil lamp he held in his off hand, striking Ardyn across the face with it. Ardyn stumbled, shocked, blood already running down his face in a wide rivulet, and then the man brought the lamp down again, right on his temple.

Ardyn staggered, falling to his knees and vaguely reaching out in Gilgamesh’s direction, and then collapsed to the floor in a heap. Gilgamesh instantly moved towards him, but the man who had hit him with the lamp drew his sword.

“ _You would raise arms against me, your prince?_ ” Gilgamesh threatened, finish his step, now within striking distance of the man with the lamp.

“ _You would defend this dog?_ ” the man fired back, extending his sword just a bit further, his eyes wild. “ _You’ve seen what they do to us!_ ”

Gilgamesh stopped, breathing heavily, his nostrils flaring with each breath, his gaze locked on the man before him, the tip of his sword catching the firelight. Still on edge, he glanced at the leader across the pool, the shadows on his face making him seem slightly more sinister, his back to the light of the main brazier in the room.

“ _Who is your loyalty to, Highness?_ ” the leader asked him, taking a couple of steps to the corner of the pool. “ _Your family and your people, or these foreigners who claim our lands as their own?_ ”

Gilgamesh’s stare settled on Ardyn, lying half on his side on the white stone, blood streaked across his pale face, matching his hair in hue, and he was hit with the unsettling realization that just minutes ago they’d been talking and joking and now he held Ardyn’s life in his hands (if there was even anything left of him; he looked frail and too motionless to be still alive).

Even more shocking and unsettling was the realization that underneath it all, despite everything... Ardyn really was _nothing_ to him.

They weren’t what he could really call friends, just acquaintances of convenience, two souls who had a found a bit of common ground in a tough situation. He didn’t owe Ardyn anything, no loyalty, no services, not even any real kindnesses.

And these men had a point, no matter how violently they made it known. The Lucians did not belong here; they’d taken these lands by force, through bloodshed on both sides.

With the Lucians dead, and their forces crippled, there’d be no one to take him away, to make him a hostage on foreign shores he never wanted to see.

Stupidly, he remembered Ardyn’s little _fuck it_ grin, how he’d bartered for Gilgamesh’s life on the battlefield, saved him from execution, sealed his wound and stitched him shut in a hospital tent and then later healed it. Gilgamesh shut his eyes, as if trying to shield himself from the inevitable guilt he would feel if he did _nothing_ and let him be murdered like this, put down like an animal.

_But he deserves that─_

Gilgamesh opened his eyes, sighing. He owed Ardyn a life; Ardyn had saved him twice, once from his brother’s sword, and once behind closed doors in a medical tent. If he let him die here and now Gilgamesh would be haunted by his choice forever.

“ _I ask you again to leave this place,”_ he repeated, trying to sound firm, but still needing to sell himself on his own decision, “ _and to not spill blood within these walls._ ”

“ _Do you think they’ll reward you, for saving him?_ ” the leader questioned. “ _Give you treasures and a little spot in their puppet regime? Maybe a title? They don’t view us as equals. We’re nothing to them._ ”

He motioned to the man closest to Ardyn, with the lamp, and he dropped the lamp to roughly flip Ardyn onto his back. His face was nearly painted red by now, the blood smeared in a small puddle on the stone floor, and the sight churned Gilgamesh’s stomach slightly. Gilgamesh snapped to as the man crouched, drawing a curved dagger from his belt, one hand braced on Ardyn’s neck to keep his body still as the other pressed that point to his jaw.

Gilgamesh charged.

He stood a head taller than the man and outweighed him by several stone, knocking him aside and pinning him like he were made of straw, forcing that dagger up to his own neck. Gilgamesh didn’t hesitate, didn’t think, just moved, pressing it in and shoving his arm outward to draw it across the man’s neck. Hot blood bubbled up from the gaping wound as the man gasped and struggled, spraying over Gilgamesh’s head and shoulders, and he blinked, clearing his eyes of the red mess.

The second man, the one Ardyn had stabbed with the scalpel, lunged for him as Gilgamesh turned, pulling the dagger from the dying man’s fingers, all to find it a new home between this second man’s ribs, facilitated by a seam in his chestplate. The man collapsed, his strings cut, sagging and bleeding onto Gilgamesh as he stood, yanking the dagger free before letting the body hit the floor, tumbling and sliding into the pool.

Gilgamesh turned to their leader, resigned.

“ _Take your cause elsewhere,_ ” he cautioned, voice even, staring down at the man half-submerged in the pool. “ _If you raise your blades again, I will not hesitate to use them against you.”_

“ _You’ve spilled blood in your holy house_ ,” their leader responded, but his men fell back to him, though Gilgamesh noted how their hands hovered near their blades. “ _I hope you’re haunted every night by the memory of how you killed your own countrymen to protect a savage_.”

Gilgamesh said nothing,just glowered as they filed out to the colonnade, maintaining his stance until the last one had cleared the threshold. He turned to Ardyn, taking a step towards him, standing above him, a bit too afraid to kneel down and find Ardyn dead and his efforts in vain. But standing there and hoping wouldn’t change the reality of their situation, and so Gilgamesh forced himself to kneel, one hand reaching for Ardyn’s neck to find his pulse.

The priestess at the wall instantly went to comfort the other, pulling her into a tight embrace, while one of the priests approached him, sheepishly stopping a few feet away.

“ _I am sorry, brother, for taking life in your Temple,_ ” Gilgamesh said, keeping his eyes on Ardyn, digging his fingers into the soft point of his neck, still feeling for a heartbeat, cursing his thick, clumsy fingers.

“ _You sought only to spare more._ ”

Gilgamesh wanted to laugh at that, but instead he focused on the small flutter he felt beneath his fingertips.

“ _Does he still live?_ ”

“ _He does, but..._ ” Gilgamesh hesitated, sitting back onto his heels.

The priest shuffled around to Ardyn’s head, kneeling down to look at him and examine the wound, laying a hand near the edge of the gash on his forehead. He hummed in concentration, pressing at Ardyn’s skull, and Gilgamesh suddenly felt oddly protective of Ardyn. “ _Here. We need to trepan him._ ”

“ _Brother, I need to take him away from here,_ ” Gilgamesh said, trying to keep his voice at an even keel. _“Others will no doubt come. It’s not safe for him here._ ”

“ _There’s blood, under his skull,_ ” the priest responded, tapping his own temple. _“He’ll never wake or... or may even die if you don’t relieve the pressure.”_

_“I know.”_ Gilgamesh was clipped, picking up Ardyn’s arm to sling it over his shoulders, hauling him up at the torso. It took a bit of maneuvering─Ardyn wasn’t small, after all─but Gilgamesh managed to get him over his shoulders, one arm looped around one of Ardyn’s legs, the other holding him at the upper arm. Carefully, he stood, keeping his weight forward so as to not drop Ardyn.

The priest looked them over, worry apparent in his expression. “ _Be safe,_ ” he said. “ _Travel swiftly._ ”

Gilgamesh nodded, and then started out through the colonnade. Their horses weren’t far, just a quick jog down the walk from the gate, hitched to their favorite scraggly tree. Gilgamesh was careful not to jostle Ardyn too much as he ran down the dirt path, straining under the white moonlight to keep an eye out for rocks or divots or any other hazards.

Out beyond the path, down in the city proper, the city was tinged with an orange glow from outside the walls, which was undoubtedly the Lucian camp and valetudinarium, now set ablaze. He could hear the low whine of horns, carried on the wind, and there were other fires, too, dotted throughout the city, likely in buildings that the Lucians had co-opted.

He reached the tree, nearly out of breath (Lucians were apparently filled with lead, Gilgamesh had learned), slinging Ardyn down off his shoulders to prop him up next to the tree. His face was a mess, now that Gilgamesh could get a good look at him, streaked with blood over most of it, a huge gash on his temple that disappeared beneath his hairline, and another one that cut through his nose. But his heart was still beating, and that meant that there was a _chance._

“Ardyn,” he said, urgent, a bit of panic in his voice as he tried to hold Ardyn’s head upright, hand planted at his jaw. “Ardyn, please.”

Ardyn’s eyelids fluttered, and he made a funny noise, exhaling, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth and at one of his nostrils. Frustrated, Gilgamesh reached for his hand, picking it up and pressing it to his face.

“Ardyn, you have to wake up,” he said, jostling him slightly, and Ardyn coughed. “You have to... to fix this. I don’t know how you do it, and I can’t make you do it, but right here, you have to fix this.” He pressed Ardyn’s palm against the wound at his temple, holding it there, snug and secure.

Slowly, laboriously, Ardyn opened his eyes. He looked drunk, his expression slack, and as Gilgamesh tilted his head back he saw that Ardyn’s pupils were two different sizes, a sign he’d seen on men struck too hard in the face. Those that slept too early died, while the others who lived... were usually not quite the same.

Gilgamesh snorted in frustration. “Ardyn, please,” he snapped. “Focus.”

But Ardyn’s arm went slack in Gilgamesh’s grip, and he was forced to replace Ardyn’s palm back at his forehead. “I killed two men in there, to save you,” Gilgamesh said. “Don’t let me have sinned in vain.”

Gilgamesh closed his eyes, sighing through his nose, when he felt Ardyn’s hand tense beneath his, fingers gripping at his scap. He blinked them back open to see Ardyn, his own eyes shut in concentration, brow pursed, his whole body rigid, holding that way for a few long, quiet moments.

“Ardyn?”

Ardyn cracked his eyes open, blinking a few times to clear them, like he’d just woken up from a nap. Maybe that was what it felt like, coming back from such an injury through these means, maybe it felt like he’d been pulled back into the waking world from unconsciousness, but regardless, when Ardyn looked up at him, his eyes were clear and focused.

“I’m good,” Ardyn said, a slight waver to his voice. Instantly he was pushing himself up, struggling to get to his feet, Gilgamesh backing off to give him space.

It took him a minute to check himself over, noting all the blood on his hands and face and frowning at it, and then he looked to Gilgamesh, his face serious and almost a bit sheepish. “Thank you,” he murmured, dropping his gaze as Gilgamesh continued to stare at him. He brushed his hair down, into his face, as if trying to hide all the blood and the wound, still scabbed over at his hairline.

“We’re even now. A life for a life,” Gilgamesh said, and something like hurt crossed Ardyn’s face, but it was quickly covered up as Gilgamesh pushed past him to unloop the reins from the tree.

“Can you ride?” he asked, holding one set out to Ardyn.

“Yes.”

“Good.” Gilgamesh mounted his horse, swinging one leg up with ease, while Ardyn took a heavy look at the city.

“We need to go to the palace,” he said, twisting to see Gilgamesh, waiting for his reaction. Gilgamesh shook his head in disapproval.

“We need to leave the city.”

“My brother is in the pal─”

“As are mine,” Gilgamesh corrected. “If fate wills your brother to live, he will survive, but if you venture up to that palace you will be killed.”

Ardyn made a flustered noise, hauling himself onto his horse, and for a long beat he just sat in the saddle, staring down at the pommel before picking his head up and scanning the horizon, his gaze lingering on the orange glows around the city, finally looking up to the palace.

“I’ll go with you,” he said, clear reluctance in his voice. Gilgamesh nodded, making eye contact with Ardyn before he kicked his horse off into a canter. A second later he heard hoofbeats following him, twisting to see Ardyn, riding after him in the darkness.


	3. Ardyn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This'll be the last Ardyn fic I upload. It's been real.
> 
> Beta read by the ever vigilant sordes.

Ardyn had never seen such chaos in his life.

It was different from the milieu of the battlefield, because even that had organized lines, organized sides. Soldiers wore uniforms, they carried banners and other such things designed to make them (ironically) visible. But here, any of these men stuffing the crowded, churning streets could grab him, pull him from his horse and into the crowds to be dismembered. 

Groups of them rushed the streets, screaming and shouting, and there was scores of infighting and looting as well. There were fires, too, in the distance, and one close by, judging from the smell of the smoke as the wooden scaffolds of the buildings caught, along with the shutters and supports. Ardyn had no choice but to follow Gilgamesh through it all, turning down twisting, dark streets to be met with various sinister figures at every bend.

They’d cut across the temple grounds and through the edge of the city, and Ardyn knew the ultimate goal was  _ out,  _ out away from all these denizens. He’d pulled the hood of his cloak up in an effort to hide his face but his clothes quickly gave him away as Lucian, from the cut of his sandals and his tunic, to the designs tooled into his bracer or dyed into his cloak. 

Once, they’d been trapped in a narrow alleyway at an intersection outside a weaver’s shop, the door smashed, ruffians making off with bolts of fabric into the night. A few of them had trapped Gilgamesh and Ardyn against one of the walls, closing in, torch in hand, and Ardyn had felt hands on his leg, reaching for his belt, trying to pull him off as he struggled and kicked, Gilgamesh fighting to turn his horse and get between Ardyn and the mob.

It had been utterly terrify, staring down into their faces, eyes catching the torchlight, looking more like beasts than men, out for blood and determined to use Ardyn to sate themselves. Eventually he’d managed to kick his way free enough, spurring his horse on and sprinting out in front of Gilgamesh, who was quick to capitalize on the surprise of their captors and ride off in Ardyn’s wake.

Gilgamesh overtook him at the next bend, riding down a long straightaway as ash and embers blew into their path, carried down on the breeze from one of the higher parts of the city. There were no words between them, just silent glances that said just enough.

Ardyn doubted he’d have the capacity for words in this moment, anyway.

They cleared the city walls eventually, Gilgamesh having to push through a crowd that had started to form there, kicking off anyone clinging to him with rather nasty, brutal blows, Ardyn following in his wake on his own spooked horse. Outside the walls it was notably calmer, though as they streaked through the farmland that encircled the city Ardyn could still see flames devouring some of the fields, dancing around and swallowing up the houses as well.

They rode for what had to have been no more than an hour but what felt like a lifetime, Ardyn’s heart thudding the entire way. Gilgamesh cut through the farms, leading their horses through a branch of the twin rivers that weaved together here, and then up into the drier foothills that ran and dropped off into the wide desert that led inland, pockmarked by rocky, short mountains.

The houses here were long abandoned, stone structures that sat like skeletons on moonlit, purple-white sand, deep, dark shadows making them look stark and picked clean. They hadn’t crumbled the way Ardyn would have expected, as the desert didn’t offer the weather and other elements that would normally tear them down. Rather, they sat, dried out husks, turning these hills into a veritable graveyard. 

Gilgamesh led him to one in particular, seated up at the crest of a little peak, with a dead olive tree in the front of it, and a decrepit goat pen just off the side of the house, one missing most of the slats, marked out really only by the remaining posts and two crossbars that had somehow been left behind.

Without even bothering to really stop his horse, Gilgamesh swung his leg over and hopped off, running a few steps with his horse until they both came to a stop near the dead olive. Ardyn had slowed his horse, marching her up the hill at a decidedly slower pace, until he reached the top where Gilgamesh stood, checking his horse over.

Silently, Ardyn swung his leg over, dismounting as gracefully as he could. His balance still felt a bit off, more notable now that they were out of the chaos, but Ardyn just took a moment to right himself as his feet hit the dirt. Gilgamesh was already hitching his horse to the dilapidated fence, over one of the fallen struts, and he looked over at Ardyn as he finished.

Ardyn twisted his reins in his hand for a moment, hesitating, and so did Gilgamesh, giving him a long look, not angry but still guarded and wholly  _ resigned.  _ Sighing, he extended his hand, and Ardyn passed over the reins, Gilgamesh tying them beside his own as Ardyn looked on silently.

“Should we start a fire?” he asked as Gilgamesh turned away and started to walk up towards the crumbling walls of the house, trailing after him. 

“It would attract too much attention, out here in the hills,” Gilgamesh replied.

“Oh.” Ardyn stopped in his tracks for a moment, looking out at the city from the foothills. “You’re not worried about beasts?”

“I’d rather face whatever these mountains have to offer than men with swords.”

_ Fair enough. _

Ardyn trotted up the slope after him, sandals slapping against the wood posts laid out in the dirt to function as stairs. Gilgamesh had taken up a perch on one of the crumbling walls, his hands braced on either side of his waist, legs sprawling out before him. Under the white light of the moon, the dark stains on his tunic were glaringly obvious, and Ardyn hesitated a few feet away, gaze roving over them.

“Are you hurt?”

Gilgamesh drew in a half-breath before letting it out in an abrupt sigh, glancing down at his clothes. “No.”

Ardyn nodded, slowly, and then slunk up to the wall, giving Gilgamesh a wide berth as he sat down, leaving a fair space between them. Settling on the narrow, jagged wall, he looked at his own blood-covered hands, dried and flaking in parts, dark streaks winding over his fingers and knuckles like vines. His face was undoubtedly worse; he could feel the blood on his forehead, over his cheek and down to his jaw, hugging the curve of his nose, and though without a mirror Ardyn couldn’t get a clear picture of it he had a fair idea just from the sensations alone.

The cut in his forehead throbbed dully, and Ardyn pressed his fingertips to it, coaxing out his magic to seal the wound, fixing the last bits of damage under the skin. The pain lessened gradually until he felt nothing at all, the only reminder of that grievous wound the tiny raised scar he could feel at his hairline. Ardyn left the one in his nose; he’d leave it as an explanation for most of the blood, and then after a few days fix it to ensure that it didn’t heal crookedly or leave him with some sort of breathing problem. 

The teeth, however...

Ardyn frowned at his bloody hands, wishing he could at least wash them off before he handled this, but it was the middle of the night and they were out in the middle of the  _ desert,  _ so water was in short supply. He roughly wiped a few of his fingertips off on his robes as best he could, and then lifted his hand to his mouth, hesitating, fingers mere inches from his lips.

Gilgamesh looked over as Ardyn shoved them into his mouth, seeking out the chipped tooth in his upper jaw first, snorting as he touched it. It was awkward, the tang of copper flooding his mouth, Ardyn trying not to drool too much as he pressed his fingertips to the gum beside it and concentrated. It took a few moments for everything to right itself, the enamel to grow back over, the root to reconnect, the cracks to seal, but once it was done he carefully pulled his fingers out, meeting Gilgamesh’s curious stare as he wiped some saliva off his chin.

“Did you crack a tooth?” Gilgamesh asked, and were things not so dire Ardyn supposed the question would have been teasing.

He nodded in response, wiping his fingers off on his robe again even though there was still work to be done. “And lost one,” he admitted. “My sacrifice to Shiva.”

Gilgamesh didn’t laugh, and the silence hurt worse than the aches in Ardyn’s face. Ardyn didn’t really know what he had expected, maybe a reaffirmation of the camaraderie between them, for both of them to darkly laugh at everything that had gone to shit around them and find some half measure of understanding once more, trapped as they were. But instead there was nothing, just terse silence, and Ardyn didn’t have the heart to push it, not after what Gilgamesh had done for him. Maybe the friendliness between them had been a mistake after all.

Instead, he concentrated his efforts on his missing tooth, fingers awkwardly shoved in his mouth once more, finding the painful little socket, repairing the crack in his jaw, regrowing the tooth, root and all, and fixing the snag in his gum. When he finished, he wiped his fingers off for good this time, and then sat quietly, watching the lights flicker in the city below. 

“You’re very lucky, you know,” Gilgamesh began, and Ardyn looked over, though Gilgamesh kept staring out at the bay, “being graced with such a gift. At least as far as witches go.”

Ardyn opened his mouth to inquire further, but Gilgamesh shut his eyes and tipped his head toward his chest. “Or warlocks.”

Slightly miffed about the assumption that he meant to jump in and correct Gilgamesh, Ardyn let the silence hang in the cold air for a moment, before finally quietly asking in a tepid voice, “What do you mean?”

“I mean the witch who starts fires with her thoughts is harder to accept than the one who helps the lame walk again,” Gilgamesh clarified. “That’s all.”

“I very much doubt that anyone would care about such a distinction, should word get out,” Ardyn replied. “We’re all sort of painted with the same brush.” He gestured dismissively before him, and Gilgamesh looked over, an oddly contemplative expression on his face, before quickly pulling his gaze away once more.

Ardyn folded his arms over his stomach, hunching slightly, and neither of them said a word for quite some time. The desert around them was eerily silent, like the sands were swallowing any noise uttered across them in some supernatural fashion. Coupled with the darkness, it felt rather surreal in an unsettling way, and Ardyn found himself direly missing sounds he would’ve deemed annoying back in the city, from insects chirping to the clack of carts in the street to the distant warbles of the town crier. 

But instead there was nothing but the occasional whisper of the breeze, leaving Ardyn to count the stars above this eerie landscape until dawn.

\---

Ardyn had nothing but anxieties as they rode back into the city.

He’d spent most of the night worrying, his fears as numerous as the the rough grains of sand beneath his feet as he’d sat in the shell of that house, thinking on his brother, on Gilgamesh’s siblings and all those back in the palace, on the men in the barracks and at the valetudinarium. He’d thought of the others in the city, of that weaver’s shop and the looting, wondering just how many innocents had been caught up in all of this, further victims in a struggle that should’ve ended weeks ago with the siege.

He’d been totally silent on the ride in, the first rays of dawn providing minimal comfort, chasing away the shadows of night but not the ones cast over his thoughts. But the city itself had been just as quiet, clearly as rocked by all of the upset and violence as they had been. There were still ashes blowing in the wind, drifting around the larger areas like the markets and any square, pushed and piled up along the edges of the walls and anything obstructing their path, and the signs of looting were evident, broken pottery and door slats in the streets, dropped clothing, occasionally a bracelet or another piece of jewelry lying among the stones.

And there were bodies, too, some clearly trampled by their companions, others dead of wounds, a quick stab to the belly or a slash across the throat. There were a few Lucians they’d seen, soldiers pulled from a brothel and strung up outside, their bodies mottled gray even in the pink light of early morning.

Ardyn wondered if that was what would have become of him, strung up outside the temple of Shiva, one of those white banners fastened around his neck or his wrists as he was dangled over the archway.

The thought had released a well of fresh nervousness in him, and he’d kicked his horse on, passing Gilgamesh as they wound their way up to the palace. Gilgamesh had followed, pushing his horse into a canter, trying to keep up with Ardyn as he meandered through the city.

The guards at the gate had recognized them straight away, a few Lucian men looking worse for the wear up on one of the ramparts shouting down the order the moment Ardyn had thrown back his hood, tangled red hair easily visible even from a distance, and unmistakable at that. He’d barely waited for the doors to be opened before he’d guided his horse through, nearly clipping one of them with his leg as he’d ridden on.

He abandoned his horse in the stable, and Ardyn was oddly relieved to see the young stable boy still alive, throwing out fresh hay for the beasts in their stalls. But it was quickly wiped away as Ardyn hesitated for a moment at the hallway leading in to the palace, wondering just what horrors he’d find inside.

He prayed that Somnus would not be one of them.

Gilgamesh appeared in the corner of his eye, walking slowly, his legs no doubt stiff after their long night outside and rough ride in, but he came to stop beside Ardyn, perhaps needing this moment to gather himself as well.

Ardyn’s curiosity and nervous energy won out over any sense of stability, and he found himself dashing through the halls towards his brother’s room, stumbling over a stair and nearly falling onto the floor at one point, catching himself just in time. The palace was largely deserted except for a few servants, cleaning up ruined furniture and sweeping up ashes from tipped braziers and sconces, and it wasn’t until Ardyn turned into the wing that housed them that he truly saw  _ blood.  _

It had pooled under one of the doorways, streaked down the floors of the hallway, no longer bright crimson but instead that spotted burgundy-brown, crusty in parts. Two serving girls were busy scrubbing it from the limestone at the far end, with buckets and cloths, chatting amongst themselves as though men hadn’t been murdered in their sleep in the next room over.

Ardyn tried to collect himself, pacing in a small circle. He couldn’t handle this, couldn’t process it, and without thinking he took off in another direction, no longer running but walking as briskly as he could. He heard the louder, more even  _ thuds  _ of Gilgamesh’s footsteps, knowing he was close behind, and Ardyn was caught between wanting to be alone in this and just wanting someone to stand beside him, someone real, someone he knew who wasn’t  _ dead.  _

Dead.

The thought had hit him and Ardyn stopped, dead in his tracks, hands in fists at his sides, nails digging into the heel of his hand, sharp little pinpricks of pain in a sea of melancholy and denial and anger and hopelessness.

He felt more than heard Gilgamesh lingering behind him, and Ardyn simply felt  _ empty  _ rather than angry, with no energy left in him to plead for Gilgamesh to leave him. He stood there, in the quiet hall, for long minutes, just shaking his head ever so slowly, unwavering, unblinking gaze following all the dips and cracks in the limestone, jumping from one to the next, when softly, ever so softly, through the haze he heard─

─a voice.

Somnus’ voice.

Ardyn perked up, straining to listen, instinctively taking a few steps in the direction of the noise, or at least his perception of it. And then he was rushing again, big, bold steps carrying him, a strange lightness in his heart making each one easier than the last. 

The shouting was sharper as they rounded the corner to the great dining hall, and now Ardyn could distinctly hear his brother’s voice, ringing out above the others, piercing and crisp and definitive. He drew in a breath to steel himself as they approached the large dark wood doors, left slightly ajar, and Ardyn shook his hands out before reaching for the edge of the door.

It took some effort to get open, scraping along the floor, and the sound was enough to capture the attention of those in the room, everyone falling silent as Ardyn hauled the door open enough for him and Gilgamesh to slip inside. They were greeted by a dozen faces staring at them, Somnus front and center, and his expression melted from tense frustration to relief in moments as he recognized Ardyn.

“Oh, thank the Astrals,” he said, quick and earnest, rushing towards Ardyn and throwing his arms around him, armor clinking as he pulled Ardyn into a tight hug. He stepped back after a moment, giving Ardyn a thorough once over, frowning as he fixated on the blood. 

Shaking his head, Somnus ushered Ardyn from the room, Gilgamesh awkwardly in tow. Once they were in the hallway, Somnus pulled the door nearly shut, leaving it just slightly ajar as it had been when they arrived. 

For a moment they all stood in silence, Somnus looking from Ardyn to Gilgamesh, and then back again. “Are you hurt?” he asked, gesturing to his own face.

“I’m fine,” Ardyn replied, waving his hands dismissively. “It’s not all mine.”

Somnus set his jaw at that, glancing to Gilgamesh. 

“And yourself?” Ardyn said, trying to redirect him. He knew Somnus no doubt had reservations and suspicions about Gilgamesh, and it wouldn’t do to let him start to feed those so quickly.

“Just a few scratches,” Somnus said, though his answer was somewhat hollow. “It’s so good to see you among the living. I feared the worst when we couldn’t find you.” 

“As did I,” Ardyn said. 

For a moment neither said anything, Ardyn brimming with questions he couldn’t quite articulate, and he sensed that Somnus had his own share. But Somnus patted him on the arm, and then stepped back towards the doors.

“I need to get back to the men,” he said, nodding once. “I’ll find you after we’ve finished.”

“Certainly.”

Somnus dipped his head and then turned on his heel, pulling the heavy door open enough to slip inside, not bothering to shut it in his wake. 

Ardyn looked to Gilgamesh, to say some small parting, but found him already wandering back down the hall, cutting around the corner just as Ardyn was about to call his name. He thought better of it, standing in the quiet of the hall for a moment, and then turned the opposite way and trudged off on his own.

\---

Ardyn had to keep himself moving.

Any downtime just meant that he’d recall the conversations he’d had with Gilgamesh from the night prior, agonizing over them and his own actions, leaving him anxious and almost paranoid. It was no state to be in, especially with how everything had fallen down around him.

He had briefly seen to himself, just enough to wash the blood away and set his nose, and then immediately set about seeking out and tending to the remaining officers in the palace. A few had passed on during the night, and a handful of others hovered near death, with ugly stab wounds that had been tended to by one of the other field surgeons. Ardyn had redone their work, coaxed a bit of life into these men, put a bit of color back onto their faces, until all of the exhaustion caught up to him in a sheer wave.

He’d limped back to his room, managing to scrape himself together enough to share a drink and a meal and heavy conversation with his brother. Somnus had of course wanted to know just  _ why  _ Gilgamesh, who held clearly antagonistic views of them, had suddenly become Ardyn’s sworn protector in a moment of crisis, and Ardyn knew what his brother was insinuating. It stung, really, to have his preferences thrown in his face, but he’d insisted that Gilgamesh simply  _ wasn’t like that,  _ in the sort of tone that warned Somnus not to pursue such a line of thought any further.

The next few days were spent cleaning up the mess of that night, and the subject never came up in conversation again. Thankfully, Somnus had some sense about him, and had opted to only punish those who had truly organized the uprising, mostly soldiers who’d been displaced when the army was disbanded. He’d had them executed, publicly, to make a statement, their weapons melted down to ingots, but the farmers and merchants and laborers who may have joined on the side, seizing the opportunity, were left to creep back to their daily lives, and things continued on for the rest of the city. 

Their own losses weren’t as severe as Ardyn had worried they might be, and in the wake of the chaos, things did seem to simmer down from both sides. It was a shame that it had taken such violence to quell things here, even after the siege, but at least the loss of life had led to something good.  

Of course, he and Gilgamesh saw each other within the confines of the palace, and while there was no hostility between them, there was still distance, one that had been amplified by the fighting between their two respective camps. Before, Ardyn would have left things as they were, but now, after everything, and with the knowledge that Gilgamesh would be coming back with them, Ardyn wanted to  _ fix  _ things (though he wasn’t even sure how they were broken, if they really even were broken), wanted to at least make amends before they set off.

Ardyn knew at the very least he owed Gilgamesh an acknowledgment and some sign of his gratitude for that night, and he had a fair idea of just how he wanted to express it. It took him some finagling with his brother’s translator and some long strolls through the scarred and scabbed over marketplaces of the city to find a blacksmith who could accommodate his request, but Ardyn soon had just what he wanted in his hands, or, rather, wrapped up in a scrap of wool and tucked under his arm.

Gilgamesh should have been easy enough to find back at the palace, either hanging about and causing a ruckus with his fellow Immortals near the training yard, or off entertaining one of his younger siblings in the gardens, and seldom sequestered off in his own chambers. But Ardyn made the rounds and had no such luck, and so he cornered any servant he could until he found one who spoke enough common to tell him that Gilgamesh was up on the ramparts. 

Ardyn thought it a bit strange for him to be up there, but decided to not put too much stock into it as he climbed the winding staircase up to the top. The ramparts were beautiful white limestone walls around the palace, and the stairwell was alight with the golden sunlight, ironically making his skyward slog feel oddly... spiritual. 

Such a feeling was reinforced by how deserted the ramparts were, and Ardyn found only a guard or two stationed at the watchtowers, leaving the long stretches between them unmanned and unguarded. It was peaceful, strolling along them and viewing the glittering, gold-tinged city around them as he meandered in search of Gilgamesh.

Just when Ardyn was about to shake down the Astrals for an answer to the question of how Gilgamesh could be so large yet so difficult to find, he spotted a figure sitting out on one of the walls, halfway to the next tower. It had to be Gilgamesh; Ardyn could tell even from this distance, from how his back was held straight to the sheer width of his shoulders, his stature concealed by the fact that his lower legs were dangling over the side.

With renewed purpose, Ardyn briskly walked down the last stretch, securing the parcel under his arm with one hand as he moved. Gilgamesh looked over as he approached, no doubt alerted by Ardyn’s rather loud, uneven footsteps on the limestone, and he raised a brow in surprise at seeing him.

“You weren’t in any of your usual haunts,” Ardyn said, throwing one arm in the direction of the rest of the palace. “Had to come all the way up here to find you.”

Gilgamesh had one brow raised, the other furrowed, his brow the epitome of  _ confused.  _ “Haunts?” he repeated, blinking once, and Ardyn had to find his perfectly naive expression endearing.

“Haunts, as in, a spot where you can regularly be found,” he explained. “Not to imply you’re a spirit or something.”

“Oh.” Gilgamesh nodded, and Ardyn could see the dim flicker of regret for all the hours he’d been forced to spend learning common over the various years, time he’d sunk into learning a useless language that coined turns of phrase like  _ haunts.  _ “I see.”

“Regardless,” Ardyn said, pulling the bundle from under his arm and trying to clear the air, “I came up here to give you this.” He held out the bundle, arm extended and Gilgamesh stared at it for a beat, before raising his gaze to meet Ardyn’s, the inquiry of  _ Why?  _ plain as day on his face.

“A token of my appreciation,” Ardyn clarified, “for what you did the other night.”

Gilgamesh’s gaze fell instantly, and Ardyn was shocked and more than a bit confused, watching with mild horror as Gilgamesh’s expression turned to something like remorse. He was silent for a long minute, Ardyn wracked with anxiety, wondering just what cultural taboo he’d broken with this, what line he’d inadvertently stumbled right across.

“Then I can’t accept this,” Gilgamesh said, his voice low, and Ardyn could hear notes of regret and conflict in his timbre. “But thank you.”

“What do you mean, you can’t accept it?” Ardyn asked, bewildered and a bit stupefied. “It’s yours─I had it made for you, and I promise there are no ulterior motives here.” He gestured through the air before him, as if trying to physically chase away whatever bad sentiments Gilgamesh had about this gift. 

“It wouldn’t be right to accept a gift for such actions,” Gilgamesh replied, his tone even but underscored with tension now. “Though I do appreciate the sentiment.” He carefully avoided Ardyn’s gaze, and Ardyn frowned, trying to crane his head slightly to glimpse Gilgamesh’s expression a bit better, but eventually just staring down at the parcel in his hands as the silence blanketed them.

Not ready to give up just yet, but still uncertain how to proceed, Ardyn instead found it in him to climb up on the short wall and sit beside Gilgamesh, setting the parcel between them. He still wanted to press the issue, ask  _ But why?  _ ad nauseam until he got some sort of a real answer, but doing so wouldn’t be advised at the moment and would likely strain things between them once more. 

At the top of the ramparts here beside the watchtower Ardyn had an excellent view of the river and the boats lazily floating up and down it out to the bay. The sight was truly spectacular out here, the two winding branches of the river both curving towards the bay, the lush green of the delta sprawling between them. The golden rays of the setting sun lit up the surface of the water, making the rivers look like molten gold framing a beautiful emerald. 

There was nothing even close to such a sight back home.

Ardyn had laid his hands on the wall, one over the other, spread his fingers out against the stone, wondering just how long these walls had stood, how many rulers had walked along them, how many invaders they had turned away. 

Gilgamesh stirred beside him, pulling Ardyn from his meditation as he reached for the parcel between them, picking it up and assessing it with his fingers. He made no move to unravel it, though, but Ardyn knew he could clearly ascertain what the object was despite the cotton wrapping. Gilgamesh pursed his lips as the realization hit him, thoughtfully, his brow furrowing in a twinge of earnest appreciation.

“Please take it,” Ardyn said softly. “It would mean a lot to me.”

Gilgamesh sighed, and Ardyn saw his fingers grip the parcel a bit tighter, though it had little give beneath the cotton. “I cannot accept it for my actions that night,” he reiterated. “To do so would be sacrilege.” 

Ardyn opened his mouth to protest, but all the words evaporated from his tongue and his thoughts as Gilgamesh turned to look at him, a certain gravity about his face, concentrated in his eyes. “However, there is somewhere I would take you, somewhere I believe may aid you in your search for the Heart. Should anything you find there prove useful, then perhaps you can reward my services with this.” He held the parcel out to Ardyn, and the seriousness slowly bled from his face, until there was just the hint of a smile on his face.

“That sounds perfectly agreeable,” Ardyn said, accepting the parcel and setting it on his own lap, folding his hands over it, trying to do his best to keep down the dumb grin threatening to leak onto his face. “Tomorrow?”

“Of course.” Gilgamesh drew in a little breath. “Though I must return you to the palace by the afternoon.”

Ardyn gave a quick, firm nod of acknowledgement, and Gilgamesh snorted in laughter beside him, the two of them quietly watching the sun tumble below the horizon.

\---

The desert sun certainly was unforgiving.

Ardyn felt as though he were melting in his saddle, his poor horse trodding along behind Gilgamesh’s, and the sentiment he found highly ironic given the dry, desiccated corpses he’d seen the desert spit out. Nothing melted out here; it simply withered into a husk, baked in the sun and turned to dust. Melting would imply that some form of liquid could exist out here, and from the leagues and leagues of sand stretching around them, endless golden dunes, Ardyn didn’t really think that was even a remote possibility.

“How much further?” Ardyn asked for what felt like the thousandth time. How Gilgamesh had the patience to listen to his whining Ardyn didn’t know, but Ardyn was grateful that the man hadn’t pushed him from his horse and left him in the sands regardless. 

“Just over that ridge and then down the dune,” Gilgamesh replied, and Ardyn nodded like he understood. Gilgamesh wandered the desert like he’d been born among the dunes, and seemed to know it as well as the back of his hand. How he could navigate like this, with endless golden hills constantly shifted by the whims of the winds and only a few mountains in the distance to give him bearings, was both a puzzle and a source of astonishment for Ardyn.

Ardyn nodded and readjusted his hood, trying to cover as much of his skin as possible. Even through the linen and cotton and leather of everything he was wearing, it still felt as though his skin were burning in parts, and perhaps it were, perhaps he’d come back from this venture with angry red marks on any inch the sun had touched.

Well, at least Ardyn had the ability to address it, unlike the other men, who were left with blisters and peeling skin for days.

Gilgamesh had suggested they set out as early as possible, before the day had time to really heat up, and Ardyn agreed. They’d only been out through the morning and already the air felt heavy, shimmering near the horizon, and Ardyn couldn’t even begin to fathom what it would be like in the peak of midday. He was grateful Gilgamesh had gotten them out as early as he had, on two horses laden with oil lamps and rope in their packs.

Slowly, they wound their way up the dune, cutting across it in a switchback pattern, until they reached the crest, and Ardyn peered down into the golden valley, instantly understanding why Gilgamesh would take him here.

At the bottom, half submerged into the sands, was a stone colonnade easily the length of the palace back in the city, the pillars cracked and crumbling but still standing in formation, leading down to some large, squared off structure that Ardyn couldn’t quite clearly see. Flanking the outer ends of the colonnade were two massive statues of seated figures, carved from the same limestone as the pillars, one missing the torso now, the other just the head. Ardyn could see the top of another statue near the sunken base of the building, beside what appeared to be the gates, and he wondered if its partner had simply been swallowed by the sands.

Already Ardyn knew the origins of these ruins, and it only magnified the awe he felt at standing in their presence.

Off the side of the building was a low puncture into the earth, a black crevice with a trail of sand leading down into it, and Ardyn was unsurprised when Gilgamesh steered his mount in the direction of it. He followed suit, zig zagging down the dune towards the pit, all thoughts and complaints of the heat and the aches he’d incurred on their journey swept away in the torrent of excitement he felt at these ruins.

They were down at the side of the pit before Ardyn could really sift his excited jumble of fragmented thoughts into anything coherent, and he was distractedly dismounting all while keeping his gaze fixated on that pit and the trail leading into it. Distractedly, he pulled off the pack with the oil lamps in it, and Gilgamesh took note of Ardyn’s childlike wonder as he pulled the reins from his hands, laughing softly as he led the horses over to a solid patch of shade cast by the building before driving a stake into the sand and tying them to it.

“Have you been down there before?” Ardyn asked as he returned, gesturing to the pit. Gilgamesh was busily winding a thick coil of rope around his arm, looping it through his wrist and then back to his elbow.

“A few times, yes.” Gilgamesh folded his arms over his chest and pushed back his hood. “But not many know of it, and even fewer how to find it.”

“I’m stunned,” Ardyn admitted. “I never expected to see something like this in my lifetime.”

“It’s even more impressive inside,” Gilgamesh countered, jerking his head in the direction of the pit.

Ardyn followed him down, still a duckling waddling after its mother, losing his footing a few times in the soft sand and having to pull himself free. There was a certain ease to the way Gilgamesh walked on it, shifting his weight so that he didn’t get stuck or slide much, and Ardyn did his best to imitate him, with limited results.  

As it turned out, the path down to the pit only led inwards into a cavern, a partially collapsed wing of the building, and then the rest of the path was a true hole, a black abyss leading down through the floor. Ardyn stood at the edge and peered down at the patch of sunlight painted on the sands some twenty yards below, GIlgamesh chiding him once to step back as he fastened the coil of rope around a decrepit pillar inside the cavern.

“Can you rappel?” he asked, throwing the unsecured end of the rope down into the pit.

“Poorly, but yes,” Ardyn replied, counting the seconds in his head till the rope hit the floor. 

“I’m not going to catch you should you fall,” Gilgamesh teased, picking up the length of rope where it curved over the edge of the pit. Ardyn was about to reply when Gilgamesh sort of stepped off the edge with practiced ease, hooking his leg around the rope and letting himself fall for a moment, until everything went taught and he slid down it to the bottom.

“By the fucking Six,” Ardyn cursed under his breath, rushing towards the edge and peering down into the pit to see Gilgamesh standing in the bottom, at the center of the ring of sunlight, casually giving Ardyn a wave of acknowledgment. 

Ardyn was much slower on the way down, the rope coiled around his leg and held in place with his feet as he slowly lowered himself to the floor, carefully looking down as he went. 

“Certainly took you long enough,” Gilgamesh commented as Ardyn’s feet touched the sand covering the flat limestone floor, bald in patches, settled in piles around the various pillars in the room. 

“I did warn you,” Ardyn shot back. He turned away from Gilgamesh to take in the hall they stood in, large and supported by more of those massive pillars, each with a diameter nearly equal to the height of two men. Sunlight filtered through other cracks in the veiling, illuminating portions further in, gold flecks in the blue-black of the cavern, highlighting other pillars and the entrance from this wing into the main building.

“Where to?” Ardyn asked absentmindedly, still taking it in as he slowly turned in a circle.

Gilgamesh gestured with a little jerk of his hand. “This way.”

Ardyn trotted after him into the darkness, the lamps jangling in the pack slung over his shoulder. Gilgamesh was drawing his own out, winding the chain around his hand as he fished in the pouch for the piece of flint he’d brought, but Ardyn beat him to it, snapping his fingers and conjuring a tiny tongue of flame to light his lamp.

Gilgamesh nodded his thanks and Ardyn lit his own lamp, keeping the chain a bit shorter and closer to him as they walked through the massive entryway into the main building. The light was better here, a few missing stones from the ceiling providing a decent enough skylight to let the sunlight pour in and illuminate the room well enough. It was a massive great hall, flanked by multi-tiered staircases on either side winding up to an upper floor, and there was a dark doorway on the first, set below the landing that the staircases led to. 

“What’s down there?” Ardyn asked, gesturing to the lower door as Gilgamesh moved left and began to lead him up the stairs.

“No one knows,” Gilgamesh admitted, twisting to look back at Ardyn as they climbed the stairs to the first landing. “No one’s been able to unseal the door.”

“Fascinating.”

The whole building had begun to lean slightly, and the landings were unlevel, Ardyn having to trudge slightly uphill as they reached the top one and Gilgamesh led him through the wide double doors. The limestone floors were chipped and dented in parts, fat divots left where they’d separated and cracked as the building settled and slid. Ardyn was careful to meander around them as he followed Gilgamesh into the next room, tracing them with his eyes until the light forced him to look up.

It was spectacular.

The whole room was bright, bright enough that no lamps were needed, thick beams of sunlight piercing the room at all angles, radiating out from clear glass panels laid into the ceiling.  _ A solarium,  _ Ardyn realized, turning in a little circle to take in all the light, the dust swirling in the air beside him. The room was broken up by thick shelves, like that of a library, and on them he could see books and the occasional scroll, wooden ends bleached and slightly warped by the heat. It seemed to go on forever, but at the center of the room the shelves all curved around to leave a circular space, and Ardyn noticed something inlaid on the floor there.

He pushed past Gilgamesh now, trotting out to the center, eyes trained on the floor as the inlay revealed itself, a beautiful mosaic of the Astrals, all six of them in their pantheon, the rising sun at their back, rays piercing a dark black background dotted with stars. Turning again to marvel at how deep the shelves went and the sheer size of the room, Ardyn now craned his head up to look at the skylights. He lifted his arms out from his sides in astonishment, letting them flop limply down and hit his sides with a dull  _ thup  _ as he looked at Gilgamesh, slowly wandering up the aisles.

“This is magnificent,” he said, shaky, still in shock. “There have to be tens of thousands of books here, if not hundreds.”

Gilgamesh nodded. Ardyn turned away, looking down the shelves.

“Why has no one excavated this? It’s so close!”

Drawing in a sharp breath, Gilgamesh shrugged. “Very few believe it’s a good idea to dig up the bones of old Solheim.”

“Nonsense,” Ardyn replied. “Think of all we could learn. The reason you dig up those bones is so we don’t make the same mistakes they did.” He looked to Gilgamesh for support, but it was clear that Gilgamesh didn’t share the same sentiments.

“What?”

Gilgamesh looked around the aisles himself, twisting the chain of his extinguished lamp in his hands. “I brought you here because I trust whatever you find in the pages here you will use altruistically. I cannot say the same for others, and that is why we leave these bones buried.”

For a moment, his words hung in the air as Ardyn nearly ignored them in his excitement, until their meaning truly sank in, catching up to him in a slow, surreptitious build. After everything, Gilgamesh trusted him enough to bring him to this secret place, saw good intentions in him and deemed him fit to entrust him with the knowledge of this secret.

It was humbling, really, and although Ardyn wanted to protest and argue that the potential gain of these archives outweighed the risk of the misuse of the knowledge in them, he knew what Gilgamesh was asking, and given everything that they’d put his people through, Ardyn knew he couldn’t deny his request, especially when his point was incredibly valid.

“I won’t tell him,” he said, small and a bit cowed, a child scolded for being too zealous. “I won’t tell Somnus.”

“Thank you.”

Ardyn blinked and gave a little half-shrug, still feeling the weight of his embarrassment and mild shame draped over him. But Gilgamesh brushed it off, gesturing for Ardyn to follow him once more.

“I think the books you’ll want are this way,” he said, and his voice was soft and friendly once more.

Ardyn went without a second thought.

\---

Ardyn could’ve spent the rest of his days on Eos in these ruins.

The books and scrolls in this archive contained every subject under the sun, everything from biology to mechanics to literature and philosophy and even architecture, and Ardyn wanted to know the secrets that each and every one contained. 

Gilgamesh had led him down the aisles, going solely based on the pictures he’d seen on the covers of the occasional exposed book or the illustrations inside, and he’d been plainly shocked when Ardyn had translated the titles on the spines. 

“You can read this?” he’d asked, stunned, and Ardyn been forced to nod in agreement, suddenly put on the spot. Gilgamesh was beyond surprised, and had admitted he’d only known one scholar capable of reading the texts from old Solheim (or so the scholar had claimed, anyway; Gilgamesh had never seen proof of it). 

He’d helped Ardyn pull down various books and scrolls, carrying them out to the round center of the room as Ardyn began to pore through them, delicately turning pages written and printed lifetimes ago. The manuals were fascinating, detailed guides and studies on building strange machines that seemed to function on their own, powered purportedly through supernatural means, ones that Ardyn didn’t quite understand and wasn’t sure he wanted to, from the hints he’d seen.

The technical manuals, though interesting were pushed aside for any medical books he could get his hands on, catalogues of diseases and injuries and remedies with names Ardyn couldn’t even understand. He searched page after page for any reference to what might have been their Scourge, though he was easily distracted by other pages on surgery and techniques, trying to save whatever details he could for later recollection.

Gilgamesh brought him history books, too, after Ardyn showed him what symbols to look for on the titles, chronicles from Solheim’s past and rise, stacking them in piles for him to read once he’d finished his current slew. Ardyn wished Gilgamesh had told him where they were going ahead of time, so that he had something proper to take notes on, not just the lone bit of parchment Gilgamesh had brought to light the oil lamps and a thin stick of charcoal, but perhaps they would get a chance to return.

Eventually, Gilgamesh tired of retrieving things, and instead sat in the center space with Ardyn, a book on botany in his lap, something full of beautiful illustrations that he could consume without words. Ardyn would occasionally look up at him, watch him absorbed in his task, gingerly turning page after page, face full of marvel at each spectacularly detailed diagram painted on the page. 

For some time they studied in silence, with the only sign that time was moving forward the shifting shadows on the floor. In here, everything seemed ethereal, removed from reality, trapped it its own golden and white bubble, specks of dust suspended perfectly in rays of sunlight, ready to float there for all eternity.

Occasionally, Ardyn’s attentions would wander, usually settling on the leather satchel he’d carried in with him, the one that he’d placed the wrapped bundle from the day prior in. He would certainly give it to Gilgamesh after all of this; he would’ve given it to him even if Gilgamesh had just taken him down to the docks or the market, let alone a set of ruins from a society that had risen and fallen before theirs had even been so much as ideas. 

But he still had questions, ones that stung softly like a bite, a dull pinch in his side that he couldn’t quite shake but wasn’t enough to totally distract him from what he was doing. Yet now, here, so far removed from everything, from all the reminders of the abyss between them, one that waxed and waned with each new turn of events, Ardyn figured he might as well ask.

“Can I ask you something?” Ardyn said, once the silence had finally gotten the better of him and he was desperate for any sort of noise to remind himself of tangible reality.

Gilgamesh looked up at him, brows raised in innocent curiosity at first, until he saw Ardyn’s pensive, slightly anxious expression, and Gilgamesh responded with the exact sort of apprehension Ardyn expected, the kind that anticipated Ardyn’s question to not be a pleasant or easy one. He nodded after a beat, though there was some reluctance in his eyes.

“That night,” Ardyn began, shifting off his knees and curling his legs to the side, his gaze fixed on Bahamut’s face on the mosaic, “did you... did you help me because you felt you owed me, or...”

Gilgamesh didn’t say anything at first, just looked down at the book before him, lips pursed, jaw set. “What’s the answer you want to hear, Ardyn? That I aided you solely because I felt I was in your debt, or because I treasure you like an old friend?” His voice was slightly hesitant and resigned, as if he’d know this issue was going to come up the whole time.

“I just want whatever the truth is.”

“And if that truth is not to your liking?”

“I can handle it.”

Gilgamesh laughed, low and deep in his chest, clearly a bit exasperated and on edge. They were out here with just the other for company, and should things sour between them the journey back would be a very long, very tense one. Gilgamesh looked away from Ardyn for a long beat, and Ardyn remained as he was, feeling like a small puffed up bird chirping angrily at the powerful, regal falcon that was Gilgamesh.

Such birds didn’t last long.

“I saved you because I felt I owed you, yes,” Gilgamesh began, and the honesty of his reply hurt worse than Ardyn had anticipated, “but also because I felt it was the right thing to do. You’re not a cruel man, Ardyn, rather the opposite, and what kind of man would I be if I let a charitable soul be struck down in a senseless act? So I saved you, and I spilled blood for you, because I know the good that you do, or at least try to do, outweighs the sins I have committed to ensure your safety.”

Ardyn had nothing to say to that, shocked and humbled by Gilgamesh’s words. Gilgamesh watched him for a reaction, and upon getting none, he looked away, sighing through his nose, clearly upset that he’d been so frank and open. 

“No, no, don’t─” Ardyn stammered, flipping his own book shut with a cursory glance as to what page he’d been on. “I didn’t expect such an answer. So thank you.”

He reached for his satchel, flipping open the top flap to fish inside and pull out the parcel, sliding it across the mosaic floor with a firm push. It skidded to a stop beside Gilgamesh’s leg, and he glanced at it before picking his head up to look Ardyn in the face.

“It’s yours. You took me here, as you promised, and it’s your reward in turn.” Ardyn extended his arm and gestured to it, palm up, twisting his hand to flick it towards Gilgamesh.

Setting aside his own creaky, dusty book, Gilgamesh picked up the bundle, untucking the end and letting the cotton wrapping fall away to reveal the contents. Ardyn saw him fighting a smile as the mask came free in his hands, sharp white highlights dotting the polished bronze whorls and curls laid onto it. The original had been lost in the muck and the mud of the battlefield, no doubt picked up after the fact and melted down, but Ardyn had tried to remember the defining features of it, going back and forth with the blacksmith he’d commissioned it from until they had something satisfactorily ornate. 

“Hopefully it fits,” Ardyn said, tapping the book in front of him. “Or it’s at least close.”

“It’s beautiful,” Gilgamesh said, and real wonder dripped off his words. “Thank you.” He held it almost reverently, hands pressed against the sides to admire the details on the front, slightly turning it from side to side, the highlights dancing over the surface as the light struck different spots.

“I have to ask,” Ardyn began, coy, “why the masks?”

“It’s a sign of an Immortal,” Gilgamesh said. “Our forces are always ten thousand strong. When one of us dies, or cannot fight, he is replaced.”

“I thought Immortal referred to you being unkillable or whatnot.”

Gilgamesh chuckled. “No,” he clarified. “The forces are immortal.”

Ardyn nodded in understanding, and Gilgamesh smiled to himself as he wrapped the mask once more and delicately placed it in his own bag. Ardyn watched him for a moment, savoring the little pang of something like affection ( _ gravely misplaced affection,  _ he told himself) that had sprung up from seeing Gilgamesh so pleased with his gift.

He couldn’t. He needed to bury those feelings as snugly as this temple was before they turned into something worse.

Shaking off such thoughts and sentiments, Ardyn shoved his current book aside and reached for another out of the pile.

\---

“How long do you suppose we’ve been here?”

Gilgamesh’s deep voice gently shook Ardyn from his thoughts, and he blinked, sitting back from where he’d been crouched over an engaging atlas on early Solheim history, swimming back to the surface of reality as Gilgamesh walked back down the aisles toward him.

“I don’t know,” Ardyn admitted. “A few hours? I didn’t bring anything to keep time with.”

Gilgamesh frowned, looking up at the skylights of the solarium pensively. “I think we’d best pack up and head off.”

“Really?” Ardyn protested, splaying his hands out over the atlas. “I just need a little more time with this. There’s mentions of something, a─a stone that they’ve used to power the devices like that door out there, and I think it might be the Heart...” He trailed off when Gilgamesh didn’t reply, didn’t make a peep whatsoever, just kept staring up at those skylights.

He dropped his gaze and swung it over to Ardyn, and there was concern tugging at his brow and his eyes, and Ardyn suddenly remembered the caveat from yesterday, when Gilgamesh had said he needed to return Ardyn to the palace by midafternoon.

Trying to think clearly and quickly, Ardyn looked at the book before him, fanning his fingers out a bit further. He wanted to take it back with him, but he knew such a thing was a vain, foolish request; he’d have to hide the book and explaining its origins would be difficult to anyone who would discover it, and it would no doubt be horribly disrespectful to Gilgamesh and his wishes regarding this place.

Flustered, Ardyn flipped through the pages, trying to decide what to do, when the pages settled open on the crisp black and white ink map closing the section he was reading.

And there, marked on the map in neat, tight strokes, was the stone.

Ardyn looked to his note-taking scrap, realizing there wouldn’t be enough room to copy that beautiful map onto it, his heart sinking in frustration at not having anything better to work with. Frantic, he patted himself down, trying to feel for anything he could use, fingers looping through his robes until they finally closed on the soft folds of his scarf.

“Do you have a knife?” Ardyn asked, unwinding his scarf, and Gilgamesh tilted his head, not following. “I want to copy this map and I don’t have anything else.”

Reluctantly, Gilgamesh fished in the twisted and coiled sash around his waist and pulled out a small, wood handled hunting knife, which he turned around in his hand and held out to Ardyn, handle first, as Ardyn finished smoothing out his scarf on the floor beside the book.

“It won’t take long,” Ardyn reassured him, grasping the knife, and he saw Gilgamesh readying an answer, one that was instantly retracted the moment Ardyn swiped the blade of the knife clean over the pad of his thumb. Blood welled up a second later, bright red beads, followed by a bloom of pain shooting down his hand, one Ardyn ignored as he leaned down and carefully trailed his thumb over the fabric, copying one of the curves of the map onto his scarf.

Ardyn worked as quickly as he could, squeezing the wound to get the blood to well up faster, and even slicing his index finger to have a second tool to work with. Gilgamesh shook his head at all of it, and Ardyn knew he thought the idea foolish, but he made no move to stop him, instead just holding the book upright to give Ardyn a clearer look at it while he copied.

A few minutes later Ardyn was copying the last detail onto the map, the location of the stone, a little smudge he pressed in with a dab and twist of his thumb. He curled his thumb into his fist, sealed the wound with a moment of concentration, and then uncurled his fingers, revealing his healed thumb, neatly bisected by a thin white line. 

He shook the scarf out, and then rolled it, tucking it into his robes as Gilgamesh shut the book, placing it in one of the piles. Briefly Ardyn wondered if they should put the books back, but Gilgamesh had nervousness rolling off him in waves, and Ardyn didn’t want to propose dallying further.

Wordlessly, he followed Gilgamesh back through the great hall and down those stairs, into the wing they’d entered from, past all the pillars in their various states of decay. The rope was still there, and Gilgamesh wasted no time grasping it, looping the end around his ankle as he hauled himself up with what appeared to be minimal effort. 

Ardyn was slower, but Gilgamesh waited for him until he neared the top, and then Gilgamesh disappeared, wandering away from the edge of the pit. The last bit was a struggle, Ardyn’s arms tired from the effort of hauling himself up, and now faced with the awkward jumble of attempting to climb over the side and get his footing, but just as he neared the edge, Gilgamesh reappeared, leaning over the cusp.

He grabbed the rope and pulled, hauling Ardyn up to the ledge, and then extended a hand down, Ardyn barely trusting himself to hang on as he reached up and took it. Gilgamesh’s grip was firm on his arm, even though the leather bracer Ardyn wore on his arm, and he pulled Ardyn up as though he were full of stuffing and not flesh and blood. 

As Ardyn dusted himself off, he looked outside the cavern, and the light there was far too golden and pink for his liking. His heart sunk as he realized they’d spent too long in the solarium, the skylights throwing off their perception of how much time had passed, bouncing the light around the room, and he wished with all his being that he could just go back a few hours.

Gilgamesh seemed quietly resigned as he pulled up the rope, tossing a glance at Ardyn once he began to coil up the rope.

“I’m sorry,” Ardyn mumbled. “I didn’t realize how long we’d been down there.”

“It’s my fault,” Gilgamesh replied. “I brought you out here, and I was the one who needed a prompt return.” Gilgamesh jerked his head in the direction of their horses, and Ardyn followed as he started walking, still trailing a bit of the rope that he was winding around the length of his forearm.

Outside the cavern, the light was soft and rosy, tinged with the pale pink of late afternoon that would bloom into the reds and oranges of sunset rather quickly. The desert was beginning to cool, though the breeze was still warm, hot even, as it came up behind them, fluttering Ardyn’s robes as he approached their horses.

“You can go on ahead, to wherever you need to be,” Ardyn said. “I’ll find my way back.”

Gilgamesh laughed, sharp and hearty, and inwardly Ardyn reasoned that he’d willingly take a bit of mockery in lieu of a morose Gilgamesh. “Only if some vulture is kind enough to bring your bones to us. I can’t let you wander the desert on your own.”

“Then take me with you,” Ardyn said, walking around his horse as Gilgamesh began to unhitch them. He handed Ardyn his reins, and then set about pulling the stake free.

“Ardyn─”

“I feel terribly about this, I really do,” Ardyn spilled, in a rush. “So take me with you for whatever it is you have to go and do. You can leave me on a random corner and collect me when you’re done. I won’t ask any questions, I won’t pry, I won’t─”

Gilgamesh sighed. Ardyn laid his arms on the back of his horse, leaning against them..

“Please,” he said, flatly. 

Gilgamesh moved to pack the stake and rope, stealing a peek at Ardyn over the backs of their horses, his mouth still set in a rigid line, emphasized by his beard. “All right,” he said at long last, and Ardyn felt the tendrils of nervousness and guilt that had coiled around his chest and stomach release.

Fluidly, Gilgamesh mounted his horse, and Ardyn followed suit with only a minor bit of struggle, having to hop twice to get enough momentum to haul himself up into the saddle. He kicked off after Gilgamesh, who was a few paces away, heading back out toward the dune they’d descended to get down into this valley.

“Where even are we going, anyway?” Ardyn inquired, spurring his horse on a bit to draw parallel to Gilgamesh. “If I may ask.”

Gilgamesh gave him a quick once over before replying with a simple, “I go to make amends for the men I killed that night.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

\---

Cosmically, Ardyn supposed it was only fitting that he’d tagged along.

In a way, he was another undue burden on Gilgamesh, the way he’d been that night, albeit a less dire one in this present moment. Riding in silence behind Gilgamesh, Ardyn thought back to their threads of fate and wondered just how deeply the universe had decided to entangle them, if they’d just been knotted together for this brief period or if they were now being woven together, Gilgamesh unwillingly tied to him for the foreseeable future, all because of a few split second decisions they’d made on a muddy battlefield weeks ago.

Gilgamesh led them back towards the city, the friendly lights appearing on the horizon as the sun began to slip below it. The landscape turned briefly lush as they meandered through small farms on a stretch of the delta before moving into more of the city proper. Dotting those green and brown hills were scrubs and palms and small scraggly trees, and the occasional farm shack, designated of course by an accompanying pen (and occasionally even a goat or two), all dipped in the pinkish purple glaze spun off by the setting sun. With the landscape relatively flat, there weren’t many dark shadows to underscore the beauty of the sunset, and instead the whole affair was pleasantly scored with the long, deep cries of doves and other birds nesting down for the evening.

“The temple’s not far,” Gilgamesh said, gently plucking Ardyn from aimless thoughts about bad omens and other such misfortunes.

Ardyn nodded, replying with a simple “Sure,” uncertain of what else to say. Evidently Gilgamesh was going to bring him all the way, and not leave him in the company of some farmer or goats despite the numerous suitable pens they’d seen along the way.

Eventually, they were wandering through the streets of the city proper, the last merchants and laborers packing up and heading home, weary faces and heavy bodies dragging themselves back for a few hours of respite. The winding dirt streets grew more and more familiar, until Ardyn recognized where they were, their path to the temple now clear in his mind.

Regardless, he wasn’t prepared for how he’d feel upon seeing it once more.

Had Ardyn been on foot, he was certain he would’ve stopped in his tracks as they slipped through the gate separating the temple grounds from the city, pensive and ruminative in the shadow of this building, this holy place, but his horse didn’t share the same sentiments about this place and instead continued on at its standard amble. Gold and white banners had been draped down the sides of the temple and strung along canopies above the statues leading up, gently waving in the evening breeze, rocking slowly from side to side like they were engaged in some slow, formless dance, and the whole scene felt so calm, so tranquil, like the air just after a storm had passed.

As they dismounted, Ardyn found himself fixated by the sight of the tree he’d “woken” next to, and he’d distractedly handed his reins off to Gilgamesh, still too caught up in his thoughts about how things could’ve gone differently that night. Evidently Gilgamesh, too, had heavy things on his mind, because once the horses were hitched he stood there for a long moment as well, staring up at the entrance to the temple, the evening breeze teasing the dark strands of hair that had slipped free of his half-ponytail.

Even as Gilgamesh started off towards the temple, Ardyn had just lingered near his horse, shifting his weight from his heels to the balls of his feet, too plagued by guilty thoughts and ashamed to make the walk up to the temple until Gilgamesh had stopped walking a good fifteen paces away, spinning around to look for him. They’d exchanged a look, saying nothing and everything in the same measure, and then Ardyn had shuffled down the path after him.

Gilgamesh led him into the temple proper just as the last rays of sun fizzled out, giving up the fight against the indigo night. The pillars of the colonnade threw deep charcoal shadows across the room from the waning light outside, cut across the white floor in bold slashes that slowly grew wider and wider, until Ardyn knew they’d swallow the whole floor once the light had completely vanished. A priestess, one unfamiliar to Ardyn, was lighting the sconces on the walls, filling them with oil before touching her torch to them, and she nodded briefly to Gilgamesh as he passed by.

They entered the hypostylum, lit by the two familiar braziers, and Ardyn wandered to the edge of the pool as Gilgamesh cut around it, heading towards the door to the inner sanctum. He stopped on the other side, looking at Ardyn, who met the gaze of his reflection rather than of his being. 

“I’ll wait here,” Ardyn said, and he saw Gilgamesh’s reflection nod before he turned his back to him and left for the sanctum. Only then did Ardyn find himself able to pick his gaze up and watch him leave.

The hypostylum was quiet, just as it had been on so many nights, and the pool was clean now, with clear water and fresh offerings of flowers and cones of incense and perfume bobbing innocently around it. Ardyn vaguely remembered the body that had slid into the pool the last time he’d been here; his memories were a hazy, greyish jumble for a good portion of the night, after he’d been struck in the head. But certain things stuck out─the body, cold marble beneath him, the red blood on the white floor, hands against his own, an urgent plea for him to  _ fix this.  _

He took a long look at his reflection, hair wind-whipped and messy from their excursion, skin several shades darker than it had been when he’d set off on this venture with his brother, a sort of weathered, tired look to his eyes and face, a physical manifestation of all the strife he’d waded through here. He wondered what he’d look like had he chosen not to come, had he pushed back against Somnus and elected to stay in Lucis at their estate, looking after their own sick instead of going on some ludicrous hunt for a rumor, a myth, and dragging innocents down in his wake.

Exhausted from both their outing and his own thoughts, Ardyn sat down at the corner of the pool, fishing in his bag for the scarf he’d made the map from. His own blood had dried down to a dark crimson-brown on the light beige fabric, but the map was still fairly readable, a decent reproduction for having no tools at their disposal. Ardyn laid it out before him, idly tracing the lines on it, feeling the difference in texture beneath his calloused fingertips, the bloodstained bits rougher and stiffer than the normal fabric.

His fingers lingered on that smear he’d marked the stone with, pondering if that really were the solution, if after so long he’d finally found just what he was looking for, if a years long quest had finally started to come to an end with a single stroke of an impromptu brush. 

Ardyn studied the map for a bit longer, and then carefully folded the scarf back up, returning it to his bag, and standing, his legs aching and stiff from sitting on the stone floor after riding all day. Gilgamesh had been gone for quite some time, and Ardyn’s curiosity was beginning to get the better of him; he reasoned that a quick poke about the temple to check on him couldn’t do too much harm.

Quietly, Ardyn padded across the floor to the open air sanctum, finding it deserted, the sconces on interior walls marking off the cella flickering as the air crawled through, weaving around the large columns that made up the outer wall of the sanctum. The large dark bronze doors to the cella were mostly closed, one propped open just so slightly, and Ardyn was instantly drawn to it.

He scrambled up the tiny step to the cella, drawing flush to the door and peering through the gap to get a glimpse of whatever was inside. Inside, everything was lit with an orange glow, emanating from a sturdy circular brazier at the center, one that Ardyn guessed had to be ten feet across. Above it was a wide gap in the roof, to accommodate the smoke from the brazier, and Ardyn traced the edge of the skylight with his gaze, marvelling at it, noting that it had a second, raised section of roof above the gap it to prevent rain from pouring down into the room.

But on his knees before the brazier was Gilgamesh, blood on his hands and forearms and smeared on his face, head bowed in reverence to the priestess who stood before him. Clad in a red and gold headdress, with matching robes just as brilliant, she seemed to radiate some sort of ethereal power and command, and Ardyn, ever the nonbeliever and the skeptic, truly felt something spiritual about her. The shadows at play on her face made her seem even more preternatural, as if she’d been sculpted by the hands of the gods themselves, too perfect to have been created through nature.

In her hands she held a bowl, and Ardyn saw the light catching on the blood coating her fingers as well when she dipped them into it and then reached for Gilgamesh’s face, tracing a line under his eye with the tips of her fingers, leaving fresh trails in their wake.

Perhaps she was divinely blessed, because Ardyn had scarcely been at the door for a moment when she casually lifted her head and locked her gaze on him, or at least the slim bit of him that was visible through the gap in the doors. 

Ardyn instantly backpedaled, stumbling on the stair as he tried to rush away from the door and back out to the hypostylum, but just as he turned, catching himself as he tripped on his own two feet in his clumsiness, the bronze door creaked open and Ardyn froze like a trapped rat.

She said something, a long string in a tongue that Ardyn had no understanding of despite the months he’d been here, and he sighed, shoulders sagging, praying to his own gods that he hadn’t ruined whatever ritual Gilgamesh had been engaged in. Carefully, he turned around, finding her on the stair, Gilgamesh standing in the doorway behind her, a worried expression etched onto his features.

She repeated herself, voice still perfectly even and smooth, and Ardyn raised his hands to indicate his lack of understanding as she tilted her head just slightly towards Gilgamesh, and Ardyn realized the question wasn’t for him. Gilgamesh stared at the floor, sighing, and then replied with something brief and brusque, and the priestess lifted her head to get a better look at Ardyn, regarding him with a quiet curiosity, a beautiful smile on her full lips, the beads of her headdress clicking together in a melody that reminded Ardyn of raindrops on stone. 

The priestess said something, this time to Ardyn, and Ardyn simply stood there, stock still, stare darting between the priestess and Gilgamesh until Gilgamesh cleared his throat and spoke.

“She says to come with her,” he said, voice quiet and collected.

Smoothly, the priestess turned and slid past Gilgamesh as she walked back into the cella, beads clinking in her wake, and the two of them stared at each other in silence for a long beat until Ardyn approached the cella, lowering his eyes as he walked in, Gilgamesh following him as he cleared the threshold. 

The priestess was standing near the brazier once more, her back to Ardyn, and for the first time Ardyn noticed the sight of the large basalt altar on the other side of the brazier, and the white bull lying on top of it, blood pooled under the sacrifice. The neck had been slit, a quick, clean kill, the belly cut after to remove the organs to read the auspices, but still the sight saddened Ardyn, an animal cut down in its prime as appeasement to fickle beings of dubious existence, and the irony of one more death to suffice as appeasement for the sin of killing didn’t escape him.

He hesitated midway between the brazier and the door for a second, watching the flames dance in the brazier before he took the final few steps towards the priestess, stopping a few feet behind her. She twisted to face them, bowl in hand, one bloody finger tracing the lip of the brown pottery as she carefully regarded him.

In the close light of the brazier Ardyn noticed for the first time the color of her eyes, an amber gold, nearly the same shade of his own, and he realized he hadn’t been so in his supposition of her abilities. Whatever she was, she was like him, in some regard, with power flowing through her veins, though just what Ardyn didn’t know.

“I’m sorry,” Ardyn said, looking at the priestess with a side glance at Gilgamesh, his plea directed at both of them. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”  He looked away, towards the doors, feeling still like an interloper here, distracted by thoughts of leaving, and he nearly jumped when the priestess took his hand.

She murmured something, and there was gravity to her voice, perhaps a bit of surprise, but a definite serious edge to it all, underscored with a twinge of sadness.

“She says it’s fitting,” Gilgamesh translated, and his voice was just as heavy, and a bit perplexed, “and that you’re meant to be here.”

Ardyn opened his mouth to respond, but found no words in his heart or in his mind, and so he simply shut it, setting his jaw.

Her hands were soft and delicate, long, thin fingers that curled around his wrist and lifted his hand so she could see it in the firelight. Ardyn stared down at her, both her hands cradling his, bloody fingertips running over his knuckles, pausing to tap some of the scars there, ones earned through slips of his scalpels and saws, or through careless duels with Somnus in their youth, each one tied to a memory. Slowly, she turned his hand over, palm up, tracing the creases in his palm, her expression contemplative, mouth pursed in concentration.

She said something, her golden eyes meeting his, staring at him intensely as she spoke even though Ardyn couldn’t understand a word of it, and he was equally captivated, wishing by all powers that he could, that something divine would intervene and grant him understanding just for these few minutes. 

But he didn’t need something divine, because Gilgamesh replied to whatever she said, and the priestess hummed in agreement, refocusing on Ardyn’s palm.

“She says...” Gilgamesh began, “...she says the gods have designs on you.”

Ardyn snorted in a sort of sad bemusement. “I doubt the gods care enough about me to bother having designs.” He looked to Gilgamesh, expecting some sort of validation of his cynicism, but instead Gilgamesh was decidedly stony, and in that moment Ardyn felt a bit sheepish. He knew Gilgamesh was much more religious than he was, as evidenced by how seriously he’d taken this affair, how much making amends meant to him, how carefully he considered the will of the astrals in all of this.

Gilgamesh was a believer as much as Ardyn was a skeptic.

Nervously, Ardyn studied Gilgamesh’s face, the shadows at play on his strong brow to his sharp nose and full lower lip, dancing in time to the flickering of the flames on the brazier, little orange highlights dropped in spots where the blood was still wet. His jaw was set, muscles in his neck tense, more fixated on the priestess than he was Ardyn, and Ardyn knew that wasn’t all she’d said to him.

He wanted to ask, but from how Gilgamesh was staring, he didn’t think the answer would be anything he wanted, if he even got an answer.

The priestess whispered another long string to Ardyn, looking up at him several times, a strange sort of remorseful concern coating her voice and her gestures. Ardyn didn’t know what to make of it, just watched her trace the lines in his hand with bloody fingers, occasionally squeezing it like she would to comfort a friend as she talked.

Gilgamesh translated none of it, just stood by quietly as she spoke to Ardyn, and then when she was finished, the priestess picked up her bowl once more, running two fingers through the blood and touching them to the left side of Ardyn’s face, running them in a short line from his cheekbone down towards his lips. The blood was wet and warmer than expected on his skin, and he felt a shiver run down his spine, from all of this, the blood on his face, words in a tongue he couldn’t comprehend speaking of gods he didn’t believe in having plans for him, to the stare she was giving him, her eyes catching the light and nearly glowing. 

When she’d finished painting the lines, she grasped Ardyn’s jaw, thumb on one side, fingers on the other, and gripped slightly, pulling his head down to look him in the eye for a long, long beat. Everything in the room was silent save the flickering of the brazier and the gentle whisper of the breeze, and Ardyn could hear his heart slowly thudding in his ears, his breath stilled in his chest, paralyzed by a fear he’d never known before.

Maybe Gilgamesh had good reason to be a believer.

She let go of his jaw and stepped back, her bowl still in hand, and instead took a few slow, meandering steps towards Gilgamesh, moving almost too fluidly to be human. He started to bow as she approached, but she beckoned him to his feet, and then said something to him in a low voice, dragging her fingers through the blood once more before lifting them, trailing them reverently over his lips and chin, leaving three bold streaks there.

Lightly, she laid her hand on his shoulder for a moment, and bid him a few final words, one last bit of advice or warning or whatnot, and then moved back, slinking ethereally back towards the brazier, smoothly extending her arm out and tipping the blood into the flames as she walked past, before letting the bowl drop entirely into the coals. Without so much as a thought in regards to them, she glided past the altar and the bull, exiting out the back bronze doors and shutting them firmly, the sound echoing around the cella.

Ardyn stared at the doors for a second, feeling the blood drying on his face and the residual heat coming off the flames, the air shimmering as the breeze slowly pushed them around. When he finally swung his head to look at Gilgamesh, he was met in turn with a look of patient... _ acceptance _ , a soft friendliness illuminating Gilgamesh’s eyes, lit further by the reflection of the brazier in his irises, which Ardyn found all a bit at odds with the blood on his face, in the best possible way.

He cracked a little smile in return as Gilgamesh came to stand beside him before the brazier, the two of them just silently watching the flames snap and hiss.

\---

Things moved quickly thereafter.

Somnus whipped his men into a whirlwind preparing to leave, installing the last of his men into offices here and setting up forces to garrison within the city, as both a peacekeeping force and one to protect this place, now that they were under the Lucian banner. Ardyn had largely been relieved of it all, left to his own devices while the men packed up all the supplies, loaded them onto commandeered ships, and plotted out courses for their return voyage. 

With nothing pressing, he spent his days perusing his brother’s collections of maps, scarf always close by, trying to match the shapes he’d drawn with anything recognizable on the maps, that he might pinpoint just where that stone lay. It was quiet, boring work, but nothing taxing, and Ardyn found that he rather enjoyed the reprieve, savoring this brief period when he didn’t have the lives of men literally depending on him. 

Gilgamesh had made himself somewhat scarce, and Ardyn was entirely certain he was simply making the most of his last few days in his homeland, and for that, Ardyn couldn’t blame him at all. From his end, Ardyn pulled a few strings and ensured that Gilgamesh and his siblings would be housed together on the journey over, keeping them close and with as many of the comforts of their home as he could account for; it was the least he could do, really, in light of what Gilgamesh had done for him.

The last fortnight until their departure (winds and weather permitting, fickle things) seemed to go by in a blur, one of restless days spent in libraries, Ardyn pulling any map he could get his hands on, and of restless nights spent searching for answers in the bottom of a brown clay cup.

On the night before their departure, Ardyn again found himself awake at the witching hour, a book of poetry in one hand and a cup of red wine on the verge of spoiling in the other. Neither was enough to hold his interest; he’d put the book down more times than it had pages, and the wine was too sour to really be worth drinking, and so after an hour of struggling with the two, Ardyn shut the book and tossed it onto the writing desk in his room and poured the wine into the potted palm in a large black urn near the door before he crept towards the thick wooden doors of his bedchamber, hesitating for just a second before he yanked them open and slipped into the hall.

He’d never come back to this place, he told himself, so there was no harm in taking one last tour of it, to commit everything about it to memory and pay homage to weeks spent in this residence. The halls were quiet, finally at rest (except for Ardyn, of course), and he relished in the freedom to move about like he truly owned the place.

The stone was cold under his feet, the air still warm but notably cooler than when they’d first arrived (Gilgamesh had told them that they were headed into the dry season, marked by colder temperatures and shorter days), and Ardyn nearly felt a chill as he wandered from one of the halls through a courtyard. As if by habit his feet led him through the halls, along familiar paths and past familiar sights, until Ardyn rounded one final corner and found himself at the edge of a garden.

Lingering under the awning, Ardyn knew full well it wasn’t just any of the gardens in the palace, but rather the lawn he’d found Gilgamesh practicing on all those nights ago. And lo and behold, history had seen fit to repeat itself, because out in the darkness of the garden, lit once more by the braziers at either end of the long pool, was Gilgamesh, sword in hand. This time, he moved fluidly, without pain, and there were no bloodstains to mar his tunic, and he truly was a bit hypnotic, striking and dashing with grace Ardyn found unbelievable for a man of his stature.

Boldly, Ardyn sauntered out onto the grass, meandering around the edge of the pool to take up a seat on the bench they’d shared that night, leaning back and throwing his arms behind him, fingers curled around the edge of the bench, legs stretched out before him, crossed casually at the ankles. Gilgamesh saw him, his attentions faltering for just a second before he resumed his motions, and Ardyn smiled coyly at that, before sternly reminding himself that there was  _ nothing  _ between them. 

Gilgamesh finished whatever routine or set he was working through after a few minutes, tucking his dummy sword under his arm as he stalked across the grass over to Ardyn. He threw Ardyn a small nod of acknowledgement before he sank down on the bench beside him, slightly out of breath, shoulders heaving with the exertion.

“No wine,” Gilgamesh commented between pants. “Are you turning over a new leaf?”

Ardyn chuckled. “Hardly. I simply donated tonight’s portion to the long suffering date palm in my room,” he replied. “But I will give you credit for the pun.” 

“Even if it wasn’t intentional?”

“Well, now you’ve given yourself away,” Ardyn chided. “I can’t let that stand.”

Gilgamesh laughed, softly, wheezing a bit, and Ardyn realized that though his injury was sealed up he still wasn’t back to fighting form, and a twinge of guilt raced through him. “So,” he began, trying to bury that twinge, “still swinging a sword around in the dead of night? Must get boring, fighting the same gust of wind every evening.”

Gilgamesh shrugged, tilting his head from side to side, a smirk still on his lips. “It does,” he admitted, “but my brothers still go too easy on me in the yard after my return, too afraid they’ll break their recovering prince. I’ve no one but myself to push me back to form.” Ardyn could hear the genuine disappointment in his tone, and it sank a little tenterhook in his own heart.

“Do you have another sword?” Ardyn asked, abruptly standing from the bench, as if he had to throw himself physically into the suggestion as well.

“I do,” Gilgamesh replied, tipping his head and gesturing to a spot out on the lawn. “It’s a bit heavy, however.”

“I’ll manage.” Ardyn walked across the lawn, eyes scanning for the dark discoloration of the sword against the grass, his heart thudding nervously in his ears. What was he getting himself in to? A rematch to settle a months-old score? Gilgamesh, even not in peak form, was still far more skilled than Ardyn could ever hope to be, and Ardyn knew there was a sound thrashing on his horizon.

But this wasn’t some grudge match, he realized, as he marched about looking for the sword; that wasn’t why he was out on this lawn, looking to take down his rival. It wasn’t even as a doctor, seeking to help his patient, the way he had their first night out here.

Shockingly, Ardyn would have said it was as a  _ friend  _ if he had to put a name to it. 

Could he call Gilgamesh that? A friend, a companion? Was that what they were after these few months, after trials and tribulations that had tested them both and revealed a most unlikely bond between them? 

Ardyn frowned as he spotted the sword, taking the last few steps towards it. As he bent to pick up the wooden blade, he spotted Gilgamesh walking across the lawn to take up his spot, his whole demeanor now radiating a sort of eagerness and excitement. The blade was heavy─Gilgamesh had in fact undersold the weight of it─but Ardyn picked it up nonetheless, holding it with two hands, giving it a trial slash through the air.

Barefoot, wielding a sword meant for someone far stronger and larger than he was, standing in a garden in the middle of the night, Ardyn had to chuckle to himself at how ludicrous this all was. Gilgamesh smiled back, and dipped his head, silently asking if Ardyn were ready, and Ardyn nodded in acknowledgement.

He wasn’t ready.

For however out of breath and out of form Gilgamesh was, he still moved like a panther in the darkness, dexterously slipping in for that first strike, winding up before striking his sword against Ardyn’s with surprising force. Ardyn stumbled back, shocked, and for a second he couldn’t help the memories that flooded up, putting him back in the stark, hazy light of the battlefield, in the mud and the muck and the grime, facing that opponent that had terrified him more than anything else in this world, that one that not a minute ago he was calling a  _ friend. _

Ardyn struggled to keep up, barely able to get the sword moving in time to block Gilgamesh’s strikes. It was heavy and slow, and Ardyn was used to lighter weapons that let him parry with ease, but lacked sheer power in their own blows; wielding this larger blade, even in a friendly match, was a challenge already. He was already having difficulty and they were barely out of the gate, and Ardyn was almost ashamed of how quickly he was about to give this up.

But Gilgamesh, ever the observer, sensed something was off, and the onslaught suddenly dropped off in intensity. His strikes were lighter, slightly slower, his form now perfect, as if this were an exhibition, all of it giving Ardyn more time to react to them and get comfortable with the blade. And now it  _ felt  _ different, enough that Ardyn could separate it from that first encounter, throwing himself into it, finding his footing and trading blows back and forth, the sharp  _ clacks  _ of their swords ringing around the garden.

Gilgamesh entertained the match for a good long while, until Ardyn was well and truly exhausted, his movements sloppy, resulting in a large misstep, Ardyn turning too far and leaving his side open. Never one to miss such a large opportunity, Gilgamesh swept his leg out from under him, sending Ardyn tumbling onto the grass on his side, rolling onto his back as he expected Gilgamesh to bring the tip of the sword down to his neck or chest, putting a definite end to their little match.

But it didn’t come, and Ardyn laid on his back in the grass, blowing the hair out of his face and staring up at Gilgamesh and the smattering of stars behind him, waiting, brow drawn in slight consternation when Gilgamesh just dropped his sword to the grass and instead leaned down, extending his arm out. Ardyn met his gaze before reaching his own arm up, Gilgamesh grasping him at the forearm and hauling him up effortlessly. 

“Are you alright?” Gilgamesh asked, and Ardyn felt his breath catch in his chest as he placed his hands on Ardyn’s upper arms, steadying him.

“I’m fine,” Ardyn replied, wanting to both wriggle out of his grasp and push forward into it. “I just got caught up in things, got ahead of myself. You know.”

Gilgamesh squeezed his arms, giving him a hard once over, the concern evident on his face, and Ardyn in that moment was tempted, so tempted, to simply close the gap between them and reach up for him, tangle fingers in that jet hair and pull him down just a bit and─

He couldn’t. Whatever closeness they had, whatever spark and familiarity, Gilgamesh felt they were brothers, the way he must have viewed his fellow Immortals. 

_ He wouldn’t take pity on them like this, wouldn’t be so concerned for them─ _

It hurt, and right now in this moment in his life it hurt more than anything else, and it would for a while, but Ardyn would get over it, would move past it, would bury whatever romantic feelings he had in the foundation of their friendship and cement over them. 

But Gilgamesh lingered there, and Ardyn tried to read his expression, finding it just as incomprehensible as the curling script of his native language or the words of the priestess that night, but for just a second he saw something there, perhaps, something mirroring his own feelings, his own desire.

_ Nonsense,  _ Ardyn told himself, blinking and setting his jaw, sending a clear signal that he was fine and Gilgamesh should let him go.  _ You’re just projecting.  _

Gilgamesh released him a second later, his hands skimming down Ardyn’s arms as he let them fall, and the touch was decidedly electric, distracting Ardyn with fantasies of how those hands would feel on his chest, his neck, his thighs. 

_ Don’t.  _

“I should head back,” Ardyn said, and this time there wasn’t any witty little rejoinder to accompany the statement, just a little shake of his head, auburn locks falling into his face and obscuring his gaze as he turned.

“Good night,” Gilgamesh said, and the amount of warmth in his voice just made it all the worse, Ardyn stopping in his tracks for a moment.

“Good night,” Ardyn replied, but he couldn’t bring himself to look back as he left.

\---

The ship was certainly impressive.

Ardyn stood at the edge of the jetty, perched at the edge of the stone landing that the long, wooden docks rolled out from. The water was a rather enchanting shade of green, algae bobbing in the surface along with the occasional palm leaf of piece of debris, gently lapping at the wooden posts supporting the piers and the hulls of the massive ships tethered between them. 

There were men hauling the remaining supplies onto the ships, walking down the piers and back up in circuits, one after the other, all single file like a long train of ants in red tunics and leather armor. It was vaguely hypnotic to watch them, carrying things down and returning empty handed, moving in such a coordinated fashion, a collective rather than a collection of individuals. 

Their ship, the one Somnus had selected for himself and a handful of his officers (the others dispersed to the remaining ships to ensure the fleet would survive even if one vessel were lost), was a massive cedar thing with a high hull and cream colored sails, adored with red and black banners of their standard. 

Ardyn’s own things had been thrown into a wooden crate and packed away, taken down to whatever dark little corner of this boat that would house him for the next two weeks. His most treasured items─a few books, his kit, the scarf, and some other baubles─had been haphazardly packed into the leather satchel slung over his shoulder, held on his person for safekeeping.

It still hadn’t really sunk in yet, that they were leaving this place to return  _ home  _ after what felt like a lifetime, that in a fortnight Ardyn would see his home shores and his estate once more. Maybe he would return, he told himself, maybe he’d find reason to travel to this city once more, set sail for these distant lands. These last few months had shown him just how unpredictable things could be, how his expectations could so easily be totally and utterly subverted, how little first impressions mattered and how effervescent the status quo could be.

Caught up in his thoughts, in memories of home and ponderings over what the journey would be like, Ardyn jumped at the touch of a hand on his shoulder, trying to contain his flinch as Gilgamesh stepped into his field of view on his right. 

“Apologies,” he said, chuckling as Ardyn composed himself.

“For such a large man, you certainly do a wonderful job sneaking around,” Ardyn muttered, half under his breath, reluctantly smirking as Gilgamesh beamed beside him.

He looked particularly splendid today, in the bright morning sun, wearing a rich sapphire tunic that looked especially striking next to the warm, dark brown of his skin, belted with gold fringe at the hem and a matching gold sash slung over his shoulder. His hair had been braided and slung over one shoulder, tied off with a little leather cord, his beard neatly trimmed, clipped close to his face.

“I’ve made arrangements for you to travel with your siblings,” Ardyn said, gesturing to one of the neighboring ships. 

“I’ve heard.” Gilgamesh folded his arms over his chest, not defensive, just curious and a bit in awe of them, as Ardyn was. “Thank you for that.”

“Think nothing of it.” 

Their conversation fell into a soft lull, the seabirds above crying joyously as they circled above, and coupled with the general chatter and hubbub of the landing it was more than enough to fill the silence. 

“You’re in remarkably good spirits,” Ardyn mused, and it did fill him with a sort of lightness to see Gilgamesh so.

Gilgamesh tucked his chin briefly into his chest, considering for a moment, before he licked his lips and began to speak. “I did do my fair share of mourning,” he replied, “and I feel it does me no good to further lament my situation.”

Ardyn nodded, lips pursed in contemplation. “To new horizons?” he said, holding up his hand in a mock toast with a glass made of pure imagination.

“To new horizons,” Gilgamesh repeated, and that smirk was back on his face, though Ardyn could see traces of that aforementioned lament at the corners of his eyes. He supposed it would always probably be there, at least as long as Gilgamesh stayed in Lucis, and he couldn’t begrudge the man missing his home.

Inhaling sharply and getting a good lungful of the salt air, Ardyn reached up and shoved his unruly hair from his face, looping a piece of it behind his ear to keep it from flying back into his eyes, his thoughts beginning to recapture his attention. 

“What’s it really like?” GIlgamesh asked, and Ardyn blinked twice, trying to narrow down just what the  _ it  _ in question was.

“Lucis?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.” It was Ardyn’s turn to fold his arms over his chest, ruminating over scores of thoughts and feelings and wondering just how to articulate them. “Sprawling. Crowded. The largest city you’ll ever see─or at least the largest city I’ve ever seen. And it’s all squared off, none of the curves you have here.” He paused, opening his mouth once in a false start before he found his words once more. “It’s a city of the best men and the worst, of the most beautiful splendor and the most rancid squalor you’ll ever find. It’s...”

_ Home.  _

He faltered. It wasn’t home to Gilgamesh; it likely never  _ would  _ be, given the circumstances he’d come there by. But the look of understanding Gilgamesh gave him said it all, resonating along that same wavelength, and Ardyn just gave a little shrug.

“I suppose you’ll just have to see it for yourself.”

“New horizons,” Gilgamesh parroted, clasping his wrist behind his back.

Ardyn nodded, the two of them staring at the ship. “New horizons.”  
  



End file.
